Psychological perspectives on the presentation of video evidence: How perceivers weight what is seen and unseen

Abstract

Video evidence is proliferating in the courtroom, outpacing the incremental advances in policies governing its use. Psychological research on attention and perception indicates that people are vulnerable to numerous biases in how they interpret video. The dynamic format of such evidence directs attention in distinct ways, and the visual system selectively captures some pieces of information at the expense of others. Thus, perceivers who must make decisions about video evidence are vulnerable to overweighting the information they see, underweighting the information they do not see, and being overconfident about their interpretation of what they see. We marshal emerging research on attention and cognition to consider perceivers’ vulnerabilities to video evidence. Further, we ask whether instruction interventions may disrupt biases in decision-making about video evidence. We present pilot data suggesting that instructions to consider information missing from a scene might bridge the gap between disparate perceptions of body camera and dashcam footage of the same scene.