Weapons Effect

In social psychology, the weapons effect states the more presence, descriptors, or visual representation of a weapon may lead to an increased probability of aggressive behaviors.

Famous quotes containing the words weapons and/or effect:

    Advertisers are the interpreters of our dreams—Joseph interpreting for Pharaoh. Like the movies, they infect the routine futility of our days with purposeful adventure. Their weapons are our weaknesses: fear, ambition, illness, pride, selfishness, desire, ignorance. And these weapons must be kept as bright as a sword.
    —E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)

    The use of symbols has a certain power of emancipation and exhilaration for all men. We seem to be touched by a wand, which makes us dance and run about happily, like children. We are like persons who come out of a cave or cellar into the open air. This is the effect on us of tropes, fables, oracles, and all poetic forms. Poets are thus liberating gods.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)