The weapon may not make the man, but it certainly makes him loom larger, according to a new study by a team of UCLA researchers.

Their study, released Wednesday in the journal PLoS ONE, shows that a person holding a gun seems taller and more muscular in the viewer's mind than a person holding a tool or other object.

The paper, funded by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, is part of a larger project to understand human decision-making in potentially violent situations.

Countless creatures, humans among them, fight among their own kind for resources such as food and mates, said lead author Daniel Fessler, an evolutionary anthropologist and director of UCLA's Center for Behavior, Evolution and Culture.

"Chickens and lizards and lots of other vertebrates have to face the problem: 'When I encounter another chicken or lizard, do I advance against the opponent, do I retreat or do I try to appease them?' " Fessler said. "All things being equal, the bigger, stronger individual wins the conflict."

The more intelligent a creature, the more involved that threat assessment gets. Chimpanzees, for example, have been shown to attack other chimps when their own side has a 3-1 advantage. Our own species is big on wielding weapons.
--LOS ANGELES TIMES