In February 2007 the Supreme Court docket heard a case that hinged on about quarter-hour of video proof from two police autos’ dashboard cameras: footage confirmed the entrance finish of a police automobile because it pursued a driver in Georgia earlier than it rammed into the again of the motive force’s automobile, which subsequently crashed. The motive force, 19-year-old Victor Harris, was left completely paralyzed by the incident.
Harris sued the officer who hit his automobile. He alleged that the officer, Timothy Scott, had used extreme drive. Earlier than the Supreme Court docket thought-about the case, decrease courtroom judges had already reviewed the video footage and located in Harris’s favor, with one writing that Harris had offered little risk to the general public regardless of his rushing.
However the Supreme Court docket disagreed, issuing an 8–1 resolution in favor of the police officer. Within the majority opinion, the justices decided that Harris posed an “precise and imminent risk” to the general public and wrote that “we’re pleased to permit the videotape to talk for itself.”
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The courts had reviewed the identical video. However they got here to dramatically completely different conclusions about what it confirmed. Certainly, the Supreme Court docket’s 9 justices weren’t all aligned on what they noticed within the footage; in a dissent, the late justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the video “confirms, quite than contradicts” the decrease courts’ resolution in favor of Harris. The episode raises the query: How can completely different individuals watch the identical video but see such vastly various things?
“Seeing isn’t just what our eyes bodily see,” says Sandra Ristovska, an affiliate professor of media research on the College of Colorado Boulder, “but additionally the experiences and concepts that viewers carry to photographs.”
Within the years since Scott v. Harris, the case has grow to be a quintessential example of this phenomenon and has been studied by authorized students and psychologists alike. “Video is in every single place, from our telephones to surveillance cameras on metropolis streets. And it has grow to be an important type of proof in courtroom,” Ristovska says. And understanding how it may be interpreted in a different way relying on who sees it’s vital to making sure justice is pretty utilized, she says.
How your mind modifications what you see
One confounding consider how somebody views a video is one thing psychologists have dubbed “slow-motion bias.” In one 2016 study, researchers confirmed that when viewers watched surveillance footage of a capturing in gradual movement, they perceived the shooter as “extra intentional.”
Equally, if a video is shaky, viewers can interpret events as more intense.
Then there may be the “digital camera perspective bias,” says Neal Feigenson, a legislation professor at Quinnipiac College. In a series of studies at Ohio College, individuals seen movies of individuals confessing to crimes. In some movies, the digital camera centered on a suspect’s face, whereas in others, it centered on the interrogators. Viewers who noticed movies centered on the suspects’ face have been extra more likely to understand the confessions as “extra voluntary.”
Eyewitness accounts will also be contaminated after the actual fact. In the event you and a good friend witness a automobile accident, as an example, after which discuss it, you may unwittingly undertake a few of your good friend’s reminiscences as your individual. This phenomenon is named reminiscence contamination, says Miko Wilford, an affiliate professor on the division of psychology at Iowa State College.
An identical impact may occur if eyewitnesses are requested to remember an incident that in addition they noticed on video, she says.
“We’re simply very unhealthy at recalling the origin of knowledge in our reminiscence,” Wilford says.
When somebody retrieves a reminiscence, they “aren’t enjoying a recording again,” explains Elizabeth Loftus, a psychology professor on the College of California, Irvine. Somewhat “we’re establishing” that reminiscence, she says. In different phrases, the mind collects bits and items of knowledge, typically from completely different instances and locations, and forges them right into a reminiscence. “As soon as that occurs, it’s not straightforward to separate out what piece got here from the place,” Loftus provides.
In 2016 Loftus and her colleagues published a paper arguing that cops ought to write down their account of an incident earlier than viewing physique digital camera footage: if officers watch such a video first, which may strengthen their reminiscences of the main points proven in it—however weaken their potential to recall different info that was not captured within the recording.
People are particularly attuned to visible info. Extra of the processing energy of the mind’s prefrontal cortex is devoted to visible info than audio info, Ristovska notes.
That helps clarify why individuals usually belief video proof—even after they know it’s false. In a notable 2008 examine on this impact, researchers asked students to carry out a playing job on a pc. When the scholars have been falsely accused of dishonest and proven a faux video of the alleged infraction, the “overwhelming majority” of the scholars confessed “with out resistance,” the researchers discovered.
“Individuals intuitively are inclined to imagine that video offers them the target actuality of what it depicts,” Feigenson says. “That is naive realism.”
How bias can have an effect on a viewer
Cognitive biases may also have an effect on our interpretations of a video. Take, for instance, “selective consideration”: if prompted to concentrate on a particular side of a video, viewers may miss different necessary particulars, Ristovska says. Individuals will also be primed to see what others need. In 2024 research by Feigenson and his colleagues confirmed that an lawyer’s description of a video may colour jurors’ perceptions of the particular footage.
An individual’s beliefs may also form their visible notion. Individuals who determine with legislation enforcement, as an example, usually tend to understand cops as performing lawfully in video proof than individuals who don’t determine with legislation enforcement are, Ristovska says. An individual’s opinions on different doubtlessly divisive matters comparable to abortion, the navy or the death penalty may also have an effect on how they view video proof.
In 2009, when researchers polled 1,350 Individuals concerning the video on the heart of Scott v. Harris, most agreed with the Supreme Court’s majority view. However the researchers recognized “sharp variations of opinion” alongside cultural and ideological strains, together with race, earnings and an individual’s views on societal hierarchy. To Ristovska, the research shows that “seeing is believing” finally will depend on who’s doing the seeing.
Ideology may assist clarify why completely different individuals may view the video proof of the latest killing of Renée Good, a girl in Minnesota, by an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer in such distinct methods, says Loftus, who has studied human reminiscence and the legislation for many years. “Individuals [have] preexisting biases that both ICE is nice or ICE is unhealthy,” she says, “and that will have an effect on how they understand the conduct that they’re .”
Ought to we alter how we have a look at movies?
To assist handle the issues that may come up when completely different individuals interpret video proof in a different way, Ristovska says viewers ought to decelerate and “have interaction with this materials extra thoughtfully.”
And Feigenson recommends viewers acknowledge that “different cheap individuals might moderately see issues in a different way,” including that “this can assist mood the overconfidence in video proof that naive realism tends to engender.”
Including artificially generated movies into the combo solely complicates issues. In 2025 Loftus, in collaboration along with her colleagues on the Massachusetts Institute of Expertise Media Lab, published a paper that demonstrated how synthetic intelligence can change individuals’s reminiscence of a picture.
Members have been proven completely different photos, together with {a photograph} of a person and a girl who weren’t smiling. The individuals have been then proven the photographs once more, besides this time the photographs had been barely doctored utilizing AI. Within the case of the one depicting a person and a girl, the researchers tweaked the picture to stick grins on them. When proven the unique picture with the lady’s face obscured, individuals subsequently falsely remembered her smiling.
The thought of AI-introduced false reminiscences is “regarding,” says Pat Pataranutaporn, an assistant professor on the MIT Media Lab and a co-author on the examine. However he hopes the findings may have optimistic implications, too. If individuals have traumatic reminiscences, for instance, “AI may assist them misremember in a extra optimistic approach,” he says.
