Abstract
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 (N = 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.
Highlights
Police departments use body-worn cameras and dashboard cameras to monitor the activity of police officers in the field
We propose that the visual salience of actors in videos influences subsequent intentionality judgments of those actors by observers, and because body cam footage typically features diminished visual salience of a focal actor, observers’ judgments of the intentionality of that actor’s actions will be diminished
If the visual salience account is sound, body cam footage in which body parts are visible for longer durations should result in intentionality judgments that are more similar to those resulting from dash cam footage
Summary
Because body cams, more so than dash cams, induce observers to take the actor’s perspective, and because most police videos used in court depict negative outcomes, the resulting motivation is to avoid blame for the negative outcome, which reduces intentionality judgments relative to dash cam videos. Stimuli included both staged and real police videos. When police videos depict negative outcomes, the motivation of the wearer may be to avoid blame; judgments of intent may be lower in body cam videos relative to dash cam videos. We propose that body cam footage lowers judgments of intentionality relative to dash cam footage because body
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