Threat Vigilance in Visual Attention Biases Legal Decision Making

社会赋予训练有素的警察在必要时对可能违法的个人使用武力的特殊权力。在执行任务的过程中，警察可能会遇到高度冲突，可能危及生命的情况，但警察必须维护他们遇到的公民的宪法权利。一种普遍的假设是，描述警察与平民或任何两个不同群体成员之间遭遇的视频片段，将为发生争执之前和期间发生的事件提供客观的见解。然而，这个项目将测试这样一个假设，即仅仅提供视频证据可能无法确保对特定案件中事实的统一、公正或准确的理解，因为视觉体验可能本质上是主观的。该项目旨在加深对哪些因素引导注意力的科学理解，以及注意力如何指导后续的信息处理和决策，特别是在法律环境中。纽约大学研究人员艾米丽·巴尔塞蒂斯（Emily Balcetis）的一项初步研究表明，视频证据可能存在分歧。人们观看法律证据录像的方式增加了他们的惩罚决定的惩罚性，当他们作为正义的仲裁者时，来自社会外群体的个体相对于内部群体的个体。根据这些发现，研究人员开发了她的法律惩罚的盲目正义模型，这个模型挑战了法律体系的一个基本假设，即所有“理性陪审员”都以同样的方式看待证据。研究人员将在四项研究中测试这个模型，这些研究使用眼动追踪技术来测量人们在观看视频证据时将视觉注意力引导到哪里，注意力如何改变对案件事实的理解，并记录有偏见的陪审团决策的后果。另一项实验测试了基于注意力的干预是否能提高人们对视频片段中描述的事件的理解的准确性，并减少惩罚决策的偏见。了解录像带证据的潜在缺陷和好处对于预测和解决录像带的潜在局限性，提高其作为客观信息来源的能力，并减轻其在夸大美国“我们对他们”分歧方面的作用至关重要。

Society imbues trained police officers with special authority to wield force when necessary against individuals who may be breaking the law. In the course of duty, police may enter high-conflict, possibly life-threatening situations, and yet officers must uphold the constitutional rights of citizens they encounter. It is a pervasive assumption that video footage depicting encounters between police and civilians, or members of any two different groups, will provide objective insight into the events that occur prior to and during altercations. This project, however, will test the hypothesis that mere provision of video evidence might not ensure a unified, impartial, or accurate understanding of the facts in a given case because visual experience may be inherently subjective. The project aims to deepen scientific understanding of what factors guide attention, and how attention guides subsequent information processing and decision-making, particularly in legal contexts. A preliminary study by the researcher Emily Balcetis, New York University, suggested that video evidence can be divisive. People watched videotaped legal evidence in ways that increased the punitive nature of their punishment decisions when acting as arbiters of justice regarding individuals from social out-groups relative to in-groups. From these findings, the researcher developed her Blinding Justice Model of legal punishment, a model that challenges one basic assumption of the legal system that all "reasonable jurors" see the evidence the same way. The researcher will test this model in four studies that use eye tracking technology to measure where people direct their visual attention when watching video evidence, how attention changes understanding of case facts, and document the consequences of biased jury decision-making. An additional experiment tests whether an attention-based intervention can improve the accuracy of people's understanding of the events depicted in video footage, and reduce bias in punishment decisions. Understanding the potential pitfalls as well as benefits of videotape evidence is crucial in anticipating and solving the potential limitations of video, improving its ability to serve as an objective source of information, and attenuating its role in exaggerating the "us versus them" divide in America.