Citation

Schoormans JP, Carbon CC, Gattol V. Perception 2011; 40(3): 371-372.

Affiliation

Faculty of Industrial Design, Delft University of Technology, Landbergstraat 15, 2628 CE Delft, The Netherlands. j.p.l.schoormans@tudelft.nl

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, SAGE Publications)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

21692427

Abstract

There is abundant evidence that people derive meaning from signs (Krippendorff, 1989 Design Issues 5 9-39) and that signs influence attitudes (Landau et al, 2010 Psychological Bulletin 136 1045 - 1067). We put to a test whether the use of crosshairs in a map can be viewed as representing violence. In a fictive scenario describing a plague of foxes, members of a Dutch household panel were confronted with a map that showed inflicted areas either by crosshairs or by neutral markers (plain circles). Respondents indicated the extent to which they favoured two solutions: killing-by-shooting or capturing-and-relocating. The results show that crosshairs indeed shape people's attitudes more towards the violent solution of shooting the foxes. Therefore, especially when used in heated public debates, the possibly violence-inducing effect of such visual metaphors should not be underestimated.

Language: en