Jumping the gun

Researchers from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana say holding a gun increases a person’s bias to see guns in the hands of other people. Image Copyright WikiCommons.

If you’re holding a gun, you probably think other people are too, according to new U.S. research.

In a recent study, researchers from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana showed that holding a gun increases a person’s bias to see guns in the hands of other people. While holding either a toy gun or foam ball in their hand, participants looked at pictures of strangers and determined whether the person held a gun or a neutral object in their hand.

The findings will be published in the upcoming issue of Journal of Experimental Psychology.

James Brockmole, lead author of the study and associate professor of psychology who specializes in human cognition at the university, says a participant’s ability to detect and categorize objects can be influenced by beliefs, expectations and emotions.

“Now we know that a person’s ability to act in certain ways can bias their recognition of objects as well, and in dramatic ways,” he says. “It seems that people have a hard time separating their thoughts about what they perceive and their thoughts about how they can or should act.”

Throughout the experiment, Brockmole and his team altered the circumstances in each picture. For example, they sometimes had the person in the image wear a ski mask or changed their race.

Regardless of the situation, the study found that holding a gun swayed observers to report seeing a gun in images more often than observers who simply held a ball.

But simply showing participants a nearby gun didn’t influence their perception.

By actually giving the participant a gun and an opportunity to actually use it, he or she was more like to classify the object in a picture as a gun and engage in “threat-induced behaviour,” the study explains.

“In addition to the theoretical implications for event perception and object identification,” Brockmole says. “These findings have practical implications for law enforcement and public safety.”