That is, half the participants saw weapon-related words on what they thought was a computer reading task and the other half saw animal-related words (control). The second experiment manipulated weapon-related images in a group of 93 undergraduate students, with half the participants seeing images of weapons and the other half seeing images of plants. Results confirmed the weapons priming effect hypothesis; even just the presence of weapons-related words or images increased speed in reading of an aggressive word. In addition, the word-prime had a stronger effect than the image-prime. In 2005, Bartholow and colleagues extended on the weapons priming effect by examining if individual differences in knowledge about guns predicted the strength of the weapons priming effect on aggression-related outcomes. To do this, the researchers conducted three experiments: (1) looking at emotional and cognitive reactions to visual gun cues in hunters (individuals with prior gun experience) and non-hunters, (2) examining reactions to pictures of different gun types (hunting firearms vs. assault firearms) in hunters and non-hunters, and (3) comparing differences in aggressive behavior following weapons primes with differences in emotional and cognitive responses to visual gun cues. Results expanded on the weapons priming effect, finding that hunters reacted to visual gun cues differently depending on the gun type. Also, individual differences in emotional and cognitive responses to gun cues were associated with individual differences in aggressive behavior following a weapons prime. Criticism Weak evidence Besides inspiring a number of replications and extensions, the weapons effect and Berkowitz and LePage’s original study has received major criticism. First, replications have not always found the weapons effect. In 1971, Ellis and colleagues gave 104 subjects the opportunity to shock a confederate (a research assistant who pretends to be another test subject) after receiving no shocks, 2 shocks, or 8 shocks from this confederate. This created angered and non-angered subjects. For some of the subjects weapons were present in the study room; furthermore, researchers told some of the subjects that the confederate was a policeman and researchers told the other group that the confederate was a student. This study did not find weapons to be aggression-eliciting stimuli, with no significant difference in the number of shocks administered among those who had a weapon in the study room and those who did not, regardless of level of shock originally received by the subject. When researchers told the subjects that the confederate was a student, the