Weapon Focus
Hey folks, not that Gerald asked really, but I thought y'all might want to hear a bit more about my research. My masters thesis is going to be on the Weapon Focus Effect. This is not nearly as exotic as it sounds...or maybe it is and I've just been studying it for too long. Anyway, here goes:
the Weapon Focus Effect is a tendency for people (witnesses) to a crime involving a weapon to have poorer memory for things around them than people who witness a crime WITHOUT a weapon. So the idea is that the weapon is central (and maybe also the person holding it) and everything else in a scene is peripheral. If you ask people to tell you about the scene or give them some other kind of memory test, they will have poorer recall of peripheral things than central, whereas people who view a scene without a weapon will have fairly equivalent recall of central and peripheral things. Basically, people FOCUS on the weapon to the exclusion of other things.
Research in this area is looking at the role of fear, emotion, experience, arousal etc. as factors influencing how "focused" one is on a weapon. It's interesting stuff....
the Weapon Focus Effect is a tendency for people (witnesses) to a crime involving a weapon to have poorer memory for things around them than people who witness a crime WITHOUT a weapon. So the idea is that the weapon is central (and maybe also the person holding it) and everything else in a scene is peripheral. If you ask people to tell you about the scene or give them some other kind of memory test, they will have poorer recall of peripheral things than central, whereas people who view a scene without a weapon will have fairly equivalent recall of central and peripheral things. Basically, people FOCUS on the weapon to the exclusion of other things.
Research in this area is looking at the role of fear, emotion, experience, arousal etc. as factors influencing how "focused" one is on a weapon. It's interesting stuff....
posted by Camel at 7:56 p.m.
2 Comments:
Interesting... Back about oh... 1981 my scoutmaster tested us with an outrageous "staged kidnapping". We knew something was coming he wanted us to pay close attention to. But, we had no idea what it was.
Several of the older scouts wore halloween masks and proceeded to "kidnap" one of the patrol leaders. Took all of about 15 seconds.
Bill, our scoutmaster, asked us to recount what we saw. Amazing how many important details you miss in a situation like that. Add a gun and you statistically remember less!? Wow!
Incidentally the old stage-a-crime trick has been being played on hapless groups since 1908....little bit of psychology trivia for you....
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