Brunyé Tad T, Howe Jessica L, Mahoney Caroline R
U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research, Development, and Engineering Center.
J Exp Psychol Appl. 2014 Dec;20(4):303-22. doi: 10.1037/xap0000029. Epub 2014 Oct 27.
Human observers are often relied upon for monitoring suspicious crowd behavior in both civilian and military contexts. However, little research has examined what individual- and crowd-level variables independently and interactively modulate threat perception among human observers. Five experiments gathered threat estimates while participants viewed static or dynamic crowd simulations. Experiments 1 and 2 used static crowd stimuli and manipulated crowd size (number of entities), crowd density (distance between entities), and historical information about adverse events. Experiments 3-5 used moving crowd stimuli and either fixed (Experiment 3) or dynamic (Experiment 4-5) crowd size and density. Experiments 4 and 5 further examined several individual- and crowd-level parameters subjectively reported by observers as critical to generating risk estimates. Overall, results demonstrated that human observers rely heavily on both crowd size and density cues, but also consider several other cues, such as perceived individual isolation and grouping behavior, when estimating risk levels within a crowd. We also show that reliance on such parameters is highly variable across participants in terms of both directionality and magnitude. Results are discussed within the context of continuing sensor system and modeling efforts, and understanding how threat perception emerges from the observation of intentional agents.
在民用和军事环境中，监测可疑的人群行为通常依赖于人类观察者。然而，很少有研究探讨个体和群体层面的变量如何独立以及相互作用地调节人类观察者的威胁感知。五个实验在参与者观看静态或动态人群模拟时收集了威胁评估。实验1和2使用静态人群刺激，并操纵人群规模（实体数量）、人群密度（实体之间的距离）以及关于不良事件的历史信息。实验3至5使用移动人群刺激，并采用固定（实验3）或动态（实验4至5）的人群规模和密度。实验4和5进一步研究了观察者主观报告的几个对生成风险评估至关重要的个体和群体层面参数。总体而言，结果表明，人类观察者在估计人群中的风险水平时，严重依赖人群规模和密度线索，但也会考虑其他一些线索，如感知到的个体孤立和群体行为。我们还表明，在方向性和程度方面，不同参与者对这些参数的依赖程度差异很大。在持续的传感器系统和建模工作的背景下讨论了结果，并探讨了如何从对有意行为者的观察中产生威胁感知。
