Coltan Scrivner

Some of it was that some of it was that there were some researchers who thought about it as a type of play in the case of sports and preparation or ritualization of certain actions that we don't do anymore.

I was really interested in how individuals made that distinction, because if you see violence out on the street, it feels bad.

But then if you see it in a boxing ring, it feels good.

And I was interested in within someone's mind, how are they making that distinction and what is going on?

And so I did some eye tracking studies to see where people would look when they looked at different types of violence, whether it was sanctioned or unsanctioned, and had them talk about it and tried to tie some of their eye movements to what they were saying and how they were making sense of it.

Yeah, so humans are really drawn to faces, right?

That's why this is a better format than on a phone.

We get a lot of information from faces.

And almost nothing can draw our attention away from faces except an act of violence.

What I was noticing is that, yes, people still paid attention to faces in acts of violence, but they were much more interested in the act itself, like the point of contact.

If I showed someone, for example, a picture of you and I giving each other a high five, that's like a friendly point of contact versus you punching me in the face.

Similar scenario, not friendly.

In the violent scenario where you're punching me in the face, people paid attention to your fist and my face.

Face is a bad example, but maybe arm or whatever.

Yeah, yeah.

The point of contact itself rather than... Our faces.

And so it kind of draws... That was my first inkling that there's something about danger and violence that really just draws our attention, in this case, our visual attention.

Yeah, it makes us kind of myopic.

That's exactly right.

And a lot of people, when they experience violence sort of secondhand, like when they see it, for example, they talk about it being frightening.