Weapon focus and gender differences in eyewitness accuracy: Arousal versussalience

Competing theories of arousal versus salience and object enhancement vs. re duced perceptual processing as explanations for the weapon focus effect in eyewitness identification were examined. Male and female students (N = 200) viewed a videotape of a male or female intruder rudely barging into a clas sroom while carrying a book, a gun, or an unusual object and demanding to k now the whereabouts of another student. Feature accuracy recall of both the intruder and the object were assessed on a postexperimental questionnaire. Results supported the salience and reduced-perceptual-processing hypothese s, suggesting that weapon focus may be a special instance of a more general salient object effect. An own-gender bias in eyewitness identification was replicated when no weapon or unusual objects distracted eyewitnesses. but was reversed when a weapon or an unusual object was present.