Holding a Gun Makes You Think Others Are Too

Summary: Notre Dame Associate Professor of Psychology James Brockmole, who specializes in human cognition and how the visual world guides behavior, did a study with Projector images and patients in five different experiments. Brockmole gave majority of the people a ball to hold and a majority with a toy gun to hold. Each person was given photos of people holding objects, wearing ski masks, changing the person in the images different races and have the participants to guess if the person in the photo was in possession of a gun or not. It was then proven that more people holding toy guns thought people in the photos had a gun present than the people holding a rubber ball. “Beliefs, expectations and emotions can all influence an observer's ability to detect and to categorize objects as guns," Brockmole says. "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. 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." Impact: This experiment done is very important. Learning new things about humans and medicine is important in helping us find ways to help humans in physical and emotional problems like this experiment tried to show. Understanding how the human mind works is the most important and basic step in having a healthy better future for people. Critique: I think this experiment was awesome. The people I this experiment sure were biased considering that they thought angry looking people or people with ski masks on definitely had a gun in possession. What I don’t know is how many people were being experimented on in this experiment and what time of day was it when the people took this experiment? This can affect the conclusion of Brockmole’s hypothesis thus, I’m not sure I can totally agree with him. Its weird how the human mind works sometimes! http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120321152627.htm