The Hierarchical Impact of Visual Perspective on Intentionality

Turner, Broderick Lee

doi:https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-kr81-p654

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The Hierarchical Impact of Visual Perspective on Intentionality

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With the global rise of surveillance technology, contentious episodes may be captured on video from multiple perspectives. These perspectives include the third-person visual perspective such as red-light cameras and dashboard cameras, the first-person visual perspective such as body-worn cameras, and perspectives from written descriptions such as police reports and witness testimony. This current research posits a perspective hierarchy to characterize how observers form judgments of intentionality when multiple perspectives are available. Intentionality judgment constitutes the focal outcome because of its centrality to person perception and its consequentiality in legal decisions of guilt versus innocence. In the perspective hierarchy, the third-person perspective, which broadly depicts an episode and clearly shows a focal actor, carries more weight in judgments than other perspective. That is, the third-person perspective is prioritized over those perspectives with a narrow or more constrained point of view that does not show the focal actor, i.e., the person on whom observers’ judgments are centered. I refer to these perspectives that are prevalent in body cam videos as first-person visual perspective. Further, both third- and first-person visual perspectives are prioritized over written descriptions. This research builds upon research on animacy, attention, and intentionality to provide the theoretical structure of a perspective hierarchy. An alternative mechanism based on construal-level theory, such that a third-person visual perspective may induce abstract thinking and in turn influence intentionality judgments was examined and ruled out. Six studies provide evidence in support of the perspective hierarchy. Theoretical contributions and a vision for future research are discussed.

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