Pickel Kerri L, Sneyd Danielle E
a Department of Psychological Science , Ball State University , Muncie , IN , USA.
b Department of Psychology , Florida International University , Miami , FL , USA.
Memory. 2018 Jan;26(1):29-41. doi: 10.1080/09658211.2017.1317814. Epub 2017 Apr 23.
We compared the influence of a weapon's presence on eyewitnesses' memory for a White versus a Black male perpetrator. Prior data indicate that unusual objects in visual scenes attract attention and that a weapon's effect depends on how unusual it seems within the context in which it appears. Therefore, given the stereotype linking Black men and weapons, we predicted a weaker weapon focus effect with the Black perpetrator. The results of Experiment 1 supported this hypothesis using White and Black witnesses. Moreover, in Experiment 2 the weapon focus effect became nonsignificant when the Black perpetrator wore a style of clothing that is strongly associated with Black men. We propose that observing an armed Black perpetrator automatically activates a stereotype linking Black men with weapons and crime, which in turn reduces the perceived unusualness of the weapon and thus its ability to attract attention.
我们比较了武器的出现对目击者对白人男性与黑人男性犯罪者记忆的影响。先前的数据表明，视觉场景中的异常物体会吸引注意力，并且武器的效果取决于它在出现的情境中看起来有多异常。因此，鉴于将黑人男性与武器联系起来的刻板印象，我们预测对于黑人犯罪者，武器聚焦效应会较弱。实验1的结果使用白人和黑人目击者支持了这一假设。此外，在实验2中，当黑人犯罪者穿着与黑人男性密切相关的服装款式时，武器聚焦效应变得不显著。我们认为，观察一个持枪的黑人犯罪者会自动激活一种将黑人男性与武器和犯罪联系起来的刻板印象，这反过来又降低了武器被感知到的异常性，从而降低了其吸引注意力的能力。
