Sign up FAST! Login

The Problem With Slow Motion


The key piece of evidence was a surveillance video of the shooting, which the jury saw both in real time and in slow motion. The jury found that Mr. Lewis had acted with premeditation, and he was sentenced to death.

Mr. Lewis appealed the decision, arguing that the slow-motion video was prejudicial. Specifically, he claimed that watching the video in slow motion artificially stretched the relevant time period and created a “false impression of premeditation.” Did it?

normalized-tmp-57a514793873d

http://nytimes.com/2016/08/07/opinion/sunday/the-problem-with-slow-motion.html

Stashed in: Time, Slow Mo!, SLOWM

To save this post, select a stash from drop-down menu or type in a new one:

We recently conducted a series of experiments whose results are strikingly consistent with that claim. Our studies, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show that seeing replays of an action in slow motion leads viewers to believe that the actor had more time to think before acting than he actually did. The result is that slow motion makes actions seem more intentional, more premeditated.

If only we could really slow down time. 

You May Also Like: