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Want to Look Bigger and Stronger? Buy a Gun

So we've "recently seen":http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/3/26/when-you-re-holding-a-gun-everything-looks-like-a-nail all about how holding a gun makes _you_ percieve an environment differently and, right on time, here's some fun new complementry...

So we’ve recently seen all about how holding a gun makes you perceive an environment differently. Right on time, here’s some fun new complementary research that suggests that, while holding a gun, you are perceived by others to be physically larger and stronger. That is, you might be the same size as some not-gun-holding yahoo standing next to you, but to a goofball American looking at the two of you (your hands only, actually), said goofball will estimate you the gun-wielder to be larger. The new research, which comes from a UCLA-based team, is out today in the journal PLoS ONE.

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“There’s nothing about the knowledge that gun powder makes lead bullets fly through the air at damage-causing speeds that should make you think that a gun-bearer is bigger or stronger, yet you do,” Daniel Fessler, the new study’s lead author, said in a release. “Danger really does loom large — in our minds.”

The idea at play is that our brains are very good at guaging threats; in terms of evolution and history, it’s still probably what our brains are “best” at. In the grand scheme of life through the ages and adaptations, it’s the size and strength an adversary that are the most fundamental messengers of your likely doom, while death-bearing implements like guns are a pretty recent phenomenon, evolutionarily speaking. Thus it makes sense that we would translate a new-school threat to something more “natural” mentally, like a giant. It might be fun to think of it in terms of a history-spanning language of violence.

“We’ve isolated a capacity to assess threats in a simple way,” said Colin Holbrook, a co-author of the study. “Though this capacity is very efficient, it can misguide us.”

The study had participants look at pictures of hands holding different things: a caulking gun, electric drill, large saw, or handgun. (The tools are used as controls for pre-perceptions based on masculinity.) Those participants were to then estimate the muscularity and size of the body attached to those object-holding hands. Each different hand held each object in the photos to eliminate the chance of some hand feature throwing off the results; so, participants saw the same hand holding different things. Study participants estimated the gun-wielders to be on average 17-percent taller and stronger than those judged to be the weakest (those holding the caulking gun).

The researchers attempted this same thing with kitchen knives instead of guns, and found a similar thing: knife-wielders are bigger than others. “It’s not Dirty Harry’s or Rambo’s handgun — it’s just a kitchen knife, but it’s still deadly,” Holbrook said. “And our study subjects responded accordingly, estimating its holder to be bigger and stronger than the rest.” So you want to be big and strong? Go buy a gun. On the other hand, you could take the not-stupid route and just do some push-ups.

Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.

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