The Influence of Threat and Unusual Context on the Weapon Focus Effect in Virtual Reality
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1
Department of Psychology,Chung-Ang University, Republic of Korea
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2
Psychological Forensic Team, Supreme Prosecutor’s Office, Republic of Korea
The weapon focus effect (WFE) states that eyewitnesses to crimes involving weapons focus more on weapons than on details of the perpetrator or the crime scene. We will investigate the two main hypothesized causes of the WFE: unusualness and threat. Using the virtual reality (VR) software NeuroVR, we will expose participants to scenes of a perpetrator (butcher) threatening, or kindly interacting, with a woman (customer or teacher) with a weapon (butcher knife) in a meat market or a classroom. With VR, we will provide a more immersive experience of witnessing the crime, not just watching a screen. We will then test memory and target identification performance. Expected results are decreased memory and identification performance, with increased memory of the weapon, in both threat conditions and both classroom conditions, but not in the non-threat meat market condition. We expect the greatest WFE when threat and unusualness overlap. This will demonstrate that both are acting factors of the WFE, not one or the other, and that when both factors are present, the effect strength is maximized.
Conference:
Annual CyberTherapy and CyberPsychology 2009 conference, Villa Caramora, Italy, 21 Jun - 23 Jun, 2009.
Presentation Type:
Oral Presentation
Topic:
Oral Presentations
Citation:
Park
K,
Jeong
JY and
Lee
JH
(2009). The Influence of Threat and Unusual Context on the Weapon Focus Effect in Virtual Reality.
Front. Neuroeng.
Conference Abstract:
Annual CyberTherapy and CyberPsychology 2009 conference.
doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.14.2009.06.078
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Received:
20 Mar 2009;
Published Online:
20 Mar 2009.
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Correspondence:
J. H Lee, Department of Psychology,Chung-Ang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea, clipsy@cau.ac.kr