Thanks to improved technology, there is a lot more video evidence in criminal courts today than a decade ago. Many police departments have video cameras in squad cars and/or worn by officers. But, are there cautions we should take when viewing video?

Studies have already shown that video evidence is not always enough to cut through jurors’ biases — toward either police or people of certain races and groups — when judging a case. Now, a new series of studies from New York University and Yale researchers suggests that ambiguous video evidence may actually reinforce people’s biases if looked at in a certain way.

New York University reports:

Where people look when watching video evidence varies wildly and has profound consequences for bias in legal punishment decisions, a team of researchers at New York University and Yale Law School has found. This study raises questions about why people fail to be objective when confronted with video evidence.

In a series of three experiments, participants who viewed videotaped altercations formed biased punishment decisions about a defendant the more they looked at him. Participants punished a defendant more severely if they did not identify with his social group and punished him less severely if they felt connected to the group—but only when they looked at the defendant often.

“Our findings show that video evidence isn’t evaluated objectively—in fact, it may even spur our existing biases,” explains Emily Balcetis, an assistant professor in NYU’s Department of Psychology and one of the study’s authors. “With the proliferation of surveillance footage and other video evidence, coupled with the legal system’s blind faith in information we can see with their own eyes, we need to proceed with caution. Video evidence is seductive, but it won’t necessarily help our understanding of cases, especially when it’s unclear who is at fault.”

The research appears in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, which is published by the American Psychological Association.

The full story is here.