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The evolution of risk assessment: Big men with guns | The Economist
The evolution of risk assessment
Big men with guns
Apr 11th 2012, 22:01 by J.P.
GUN-TOTING individuals intimidate unarmed folk because they tote guns. If that were not scary enough, the weapons seem to make those wielding them look bigger and beefier to boot. That, at least, is the conclusion of a study just published in the Public Library of Science by Daniel Fessler and his colleagues from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Like all animals, human beings need a snappy, rough-and-ready way to assess whether to fight or flee a foe. Spending too much time weighing the pros and cons could, after all, have disastrous consequences. But how formidable a foe is, for man as for other creatures, depends on a plethora of features. Size and sturdiness matter, of course, but so does sex, age, health or, indeed, how many pals he has. And in the case of human enemies, there are weapons to contend with.
Dr Fessler reasoned that since size and musculature have been a reliable indicator of formidability for the longest stretch of man's evolutionary past, they might still dominate the calculation, even if actual awesomeness no longer stems from these physical attributes. In other words, brains might recast more complex formidablity-affording characteristics, like weapons, in terms of extra inches and bigger biceps. This blown-up mental image in turn activates the ancient, quick-fire fight-or-flee calculator which takes basic physical factors as inputs.
To test his theory, Dr Fessler recruited 628 volunteers and asked them to gauge the height (in feet and inches), overall size and muscularity (both on a six-point scale) of four men, ostensibly on the basis of pictures of their hands. In fact, all the hands in the photos were nearly identical. What differed from picture to picture was what they were holding. Objects included a caulking gun, a power drill, a handsaw or a 0.45 calibre handgun.
The researchers duly found that the handgun holders were judged to be 0.2 inches (0.5cm), 0.5 inches and 2.3 inches taller than those who held a saw, drill and caulking gun, respectively. These results more or less matched the scores on the other two formidability measures, with the gun-holders consistently coming top. They also reflected the perceived relative danger posed by each object, as determined in a separate study.
Dr Fessler's findings cannot be explained by the fact that gun-owners are taller than average—they are not. Nor are cultural associations between guns on the one hand, and Rambo on the other, to blame. When Dr Fessler repeated the experiment replacing the handgun with a kitchen knife—which most respondents associate with housewives, not Sylvester Stallone (who, incidentally, stands at a relatively modest 177cm)—as the most dangerous object in the mix, the results matched those of the earlier study perfectly. Weapons, then, not only make a man feel big; they make others feel he is, too.
The evolution of risk assessment: Big men with guns | The Economist
The evolution of risk assessment
Big men with guns
Apr 11th 2012, 22:01 by J.P.
GUN-TOTING individuals intimidate unarmed folk because they tote guns. If that were not scary enough, the weapons seem to make those wielding them look bigger and beefier to boot. That, at least, is the conclusion of a study just published in the Public Library of Science by Daniel Fessler and his colleagues from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Like all animals, human beings need a snappy, rough-and-ready way to assess whether to fight or flee a foe. Spending too much time weighing the pros and cons could, after all, have disastrous consequences. But how formidable a foe is, for man as for other creatures, depends on a plethora of features. Size and sturdiness matter, of course, but so does sex, age, health or, indeed, how many pals he has. And in the case of human enemies, there are weapons to contend with.
Dr Fessler reasoned that since size and musculature have been a reliable indicator of formidability for the longest stretch of man's evolutionary past, they might still dominate the calculation, even if actual awesomeness no longer stems from these physical attributes. In other words, brains might recast more complex formidablity-affording characteristics, like weapons, in terms of extra inches and bigger biceps. This blown-up mental image in turn activates the ancient, quick-fire fight-or-flee calculator which takes basic physical factors as inputs.
To test his theory, Dr Fessler recruited 628 volunteers and asked them to gauge the height (in feet and inches), overall size and muscularity (both on a six-point scale) of four men, ostensibly on the basis of pictures of their hands. In fact, all the hands in the photos were nearly identical. What differed from picture to picture was what they were holding. Objects included a caulking gun, a power drill, a handsaw or a 0.45 calibre handgun.
The researchers duly found that the handgun holders were judged to be 0.2 inches (0.5cm), 0.5 inches and 2.3 inches taller than those who held a saw, drill and caulking gun, respectively. These results more or less matched the scores on the other two formidability measures, with the gun-holders consistently coming top. They also reflected the perceived relative danger posed by each object, as determined in a separate study.
Dr Fessler's findings cannot be explained by the fact that gun-owners are taller than average—they are not. Nor are cultural associations between guns on the one hand, and Rambo on the other, to blame. When Dr Fessler repeated the experiment replacing the handgun with a kitchen knife—which most respondents associate with housewives, not Sylvester Stallone (who, incidentally, stands at a relatively modest 177cm)—as the most dangerous object in the mix, the results matched those of the earlier study perfectly. Weapons, then, not only make a man feel big; they make others feel he is, too.
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