Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208;
Anderson School of Management, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2019 Jan 22;116(4):1201-1206. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1805928116. Epub 2019 Jan 7.
Police departments use body-worn cameras (body cams) and dashboard cameras (dash cams) to monitor the activity of police officers in the field. Video from these cameras informs review of police conduct in disputed circumstances, often with the goal of determining an officer's intent. Eight experiments ( = 2,119) reveal that body cam video of an incident results in lower observer judgments of intentionality than dash cam video of the same incident, an effect documented with both scripted videos and real police videos. This effect was due, in part, to variation in the visual salience of the focal actor: the body cam wearer is typically less visually salient when depicted in body versus dash cam video, which corresponds with lower observer intentionality judgments. In showing how visual salience of the focal actor may introduce unique effects on observer judgment, this research establishes an empirical platform that may inform public policy regarding surveillance of police conduct.
警察部门使用随身摄像机（body cams）和仪表盘摄像机（dash cams）来监控现场警察的活动。这些摄像机的视频资料为审查有争议情况下的警察行为提供了依据，通常旨在确定警察的意图。八项实验（=2119）表明，与同一事件的仪表盘摄像机视频相比，事件随身摄像机视频会导致观察者对意图的判断降低，脚本视频和真实警察视频都记录了这一效果。这种效果部分归因于焦点行为者的视觉显著性的变化：当在身体与仪表盘摄像机视频中描绘时，摄像机佩戴者通常不那么具有视觉显著性，这与观察者意图判断降低相对应。通过展示焦点行为者的视觉显著性如何可能对观察者判断产生独特的影响，这项研究建立了一个可能为警察行为监控的公共政策提供信息的经验平台。
