image: Panel A: In Study 1, participants rated the height and size of men holding a .45 caliber handgun, a drill, a small handsaw, and a caulking gun. Panel B: In Study 3, participants rated the height, size, and muscularity of men holding a .357 caliber handgun, a drill, a large handsaw, and a caulking gun. Panel C: In Study 5, participants rated the height, size, and muscularity of men holding a kitchen knife, a paintbrush, and a toy squirt gun. In Study 2, participants rated the potential lethality of the objects shown in Panels A and B. In Study 4, participants rated the potential lethality of the objects shown in Panel C, as well as identifying the age (adult vs. child) and gender of the persons most associated with using each object. Photographs, presented to participants in color, were resized so that the objective dimensions of each hand displayed on the participant’s computer screen remained constant across all images. view more
Credit: Fessler DMT, Holbrook C, Snyder JK (2012) Weapons Make the Man (Larger): Formidability Is Represented as Size and Strength in Humans. <I>PLoS ONE</I> 7(4): e32751. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0032751
Holding a weapon makes men look taller and more muscular, according to a report published Apr. 11 in the open access journal PLoS ONE.
The researchers, led by Daniel Fessler at University of California Los Angeles, conducted a number of online surveys to determine that men holding a gun or a large kitchen knife were viewed as larger and more muscular than men holding non-threatening objects. This pattern cannot be explained by any actual correlation between gun ownership and physical size.
"For nearly all vertebrates, size matters -- bigger animals win fights with smaller animals. Human psychology reflects this, as people use size as a way of conceptualizing how dangerous another person might be", says Dr. Fessler.
Citation: Fessler DMT, Holbrook C, Snyder JK (2012) Weapons Make the Man (Larger): Formidability Is Represented as Size and Strength in Humans. PLoS ONE 7(4): e32751. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0032751
Financial Disclosure: This work was supported by the United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research under Award #FA9550-10-1-0511. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing Interest Statement: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
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