Question

In a study by Lassiter and his colleagues (2007), they found that when judges and police officers viewed tapes of interrogations, they were more likely to find the confession of a suspect voluntary when the camera focused only on the suspect. Why?

Answer 1

This is due to an effect known as the camera-perspective bias. The camera-perspective bias is a bias that can affect everyone, not only police officers. This bias leads us to perceive a scene in a different way depending on the angle of the camera. It has been shown that police officers tend to find a confession of a suspect voluntary when the camera is only pointing at the suspect.This also seems to be true regardless of the amount of training an officer has received.