The role of emotion recognition from non-verbal behaviour in detection of concealed firearm carrying

Individuals can detect the mood of people shown in image sequences on the basis of non verbal cues, such as facial expressions and body movements. Carrying firearms is known to elicit certain emotional states in their carrier. In relation to the CCTV surveillance task the present study investigated whether observers are able to perceive differences in the emotional states and nonverbal behaviour of people who are, and who are not, carrying concealed firearms, as judged through monitoring video footage. The results showed that the observers were able to differentiate between the two video clip types by attributing different moods to the surveillance targets who were correctly judged to have higher levels of dysphoria whilst concealing a firearm than whilst concealing an innocuous object. Furthermore, certain visual cues were found to be related to the performance of the observers. These results are discussed with regard to future research on this issue.