Unusualness and Threat as Possible Causes of "Weapon Focus"

Pickel, Kerri L.

doi:10.1080/741942361

Cited by 78 publications

(113 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Specifically, arming an observer may reduce the unusualness of weapons in a scene. People tend to look more at objects when they are unexpected in a scene (Loftus & Mackworth, 1978), and because weapons are not generally expected in everyday situations, their unexpected presence could account for a weapon focus effect (Pickel, 1998). To address this issue, we compared the dwell times in the first half of the experiment with dwell times in the second half of the experiment.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Any weapon is inherently significant in a scene because of the potential danger, but alternative explanations have suggested that the weapon focus effect can also be explained by unusualness (e.g., Pickel, 1998Pickel, , 1999. These two possibilities are not mutually exclusive, and both could lead to an increase in attention paid to weapons, relative to other objects.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Armed and attentive: Holding a weapon can bias attentional priorities in scene viewing

Biggs

Brockmole

Witt

2013

Atten Percept Psychophys

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The action-specific perception hypothesis (Witt, Current Directions in Psychological Science 20: 201-206, 2011) claims that the environment is represented with respect to potential interactions for objects present within said environment. This investigation sought to extend the hypothesis beyond perceptual mechanisms and assess whether actionspecific potential could alter attentional allocation. To do so, we examined a well-replicated attention bias in the weapon focus effect (Loftus, Loftus, & Messo, Law and Human Behaviour 1, [55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62] 1987), which represents the tendency for observers to attend more to weapons than to neutral objects. Our key manipulation altered the anticipated actionspecific potential of observers by providing them a firearm while they freely viewed scenes with and without weapons present. We replicated the original weapon focus effect using modern eye tracking and confirmed that the increase in time looking at weapons comes at a cost of less time spent looking at faces. Additionally, observers who held firearms while viewing the various scenes showed a general bias to look at faces over objects, but only if the firearm was in a readily usable position (i.e., pointed at the scenes rather than holstered at one's side). These two effects, weapon focus and the newly found bias to look more at faces when armed, canceled out one another without interacting. This evidence confirms that the action capabilities of the observer alter more than just perceptual mechanisms and that holding a weapon can change attentional priorities. Theoretical and real-world implications are discussed.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Armed and attentive: Holding a weapon can bias attentional priorities in scene viewing

Biggs

Brockmole

Witt

2013

Atten Percept Psychophys

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“…In some studies, weapon focus has been observed in the absence of emotion, indicating the importance of the weapon's potency as an attention magnet (Kramer, Buckhout, & Eugenio, 1990;Maass & Köhnken, 1989). In addition, several studies speak directly to the claim that weapon focus is observed precisely because the weapon is a surprising and novel stimulus (Mitchell, Livosky, & Mather, 1998;Pickel, 1998Pickel, , 1999. Other studies, however, suggest that the strength of the weapon-focus effect increases as arousal increases, indicating that arousal also plays a role (e.g., Peters, 1988).…”

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confidence: 99%

Memory for thematically arousing events

et al. 2004

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Many studies have indicated that emotional arousal improves memory for the center, or gist, of an event but undermines memory for the event's periphery. However, all of these studies have elicited emotion by showing participants some salient visual stimulus intended to arouse them (e.g., the sight of a wound). This stimulus may have served as an attention magnet, and this, not the arousal, may have been the cause of the observed narrowing of memory. In this article, we examine how participants remember events that involve thematically induced arousal, arousal produced by empathy, rather than by a visual emotional stimulus. The data show that emotionality improves memory for all aspects of these events, with no memory narrowing.

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“…The presence of a weapon may, therefore, be contextually inappropriate. For example, Pickel (1998) manipulated unusualness and threat but found that only unusualness impacted memory (see also Pickel, Ross, & Truelove, 2006). This finding suggests that it may be unusualness, rather than threat, that captures our attention.…”

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confidence: 99%

Memory impairment in the weapon focus effect

Saunders

2009

Memory & Cognition

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Two experiments are reported in which postevent source of misinformation was manipulated within weaponpresent and weapon-absent scenarios. Participants viewed slides depicting either a weapon or a newspaper event and then received either incomplete questioning or a narrative. Both postevent sources contained misleading information about a central and peripheral detail concerning either the weapon or the newspaper scenario. With a modified test in Experiment 1, questioning was found to increase misinformation effects concerning the central item, as compared with a narrative, and more misinformation effects were found for the weapon-peripheral than for the newspaper-peripheral item. In Experiment 2, the participants were more likely to claim to have seen contradictory and additive misinformation about the central item in the slides following questioning, and more contradictory and additive misinformation effects occurred for the weapon-peripheral than for the newspaper-peripheral item. The findings are considered in terms of the effects of both postevent and encoding factors on memory.

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Unusualness and Threat as Possible Causes of "Weapon Focus"

Cited by 78 publications

References 14 publications

Armed and attentive: Holding a weapon can bias attentional priorities in scene viewing

Armed and attentive: Holding a weapon can bias attentional priorities in scene viewing

Memory for thematically arousing events

Memory impairment in the weapon focus effect

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