Is someone holding a gun more likely to think others are armed? New study says yes. [View all]

[baldguy]

When people have a gun in their hand, they’re more likely to believe an object held by someone else is also a gun.

They’re also more likely to raise the gun to shoot.

Those are the key findings from a new study that will be published later this spring in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance.

“The familiar saying goes that when you hold a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” write the two psychologists who authored the study, James Brockmole of the University of Notre Dame and Jessica Witt of Purdue University. “The apparent harmlessness of this expression fades when one considers what happens when a person holds a gun.”

In their paper, Brockmole and Witt cite the tragic 1999 case of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed black man who was shot 41 times by New York City police when they mistook the wallet he was trying to show them for a gun. But the study’s findings also seem relevant in the wake of a more recent tragedy, the Feb. 26 shooting in Sanford, Fla., of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black high school student who had been carrying only a cell phone, a bag of Skittles and an iced tea at the time of his death.

more:
http://www.minnpost.com/second-opinion/2012/03/someone-holding-gun-more-likely-think-others-are-armed-new-study-says-yes

More proof that only assholes carry guns.