2.8 Accuracy of eyewitness testimony: Anxiety

Question 1

What is anxiety

Answer 1

An unpleasant emotional state often accompanied by increased heart rate and rapid breathing

Question 2

Summarise anxiety as a factor of the eyewitness testimony (6)

Answer 2

• stress reduces performance on complicated cognitive tasks
• Johnson and Scott - weapon focus effect reduces accuracy of face identification
• Loftus et al - monitored eye movements during weapon exposure - focus was on weapon
• Evolutionary argument - adaptive to remember stress inducing events
• High anxiety victims remember the most accurately (bank tellers) - Christianson and Hubinette
• Yerkes-Dodson effect explains high accuracy at moderate levels of anxiety and low accuracy when anxiety is high or low (Deffenbacher)

Question 3

Evaluate anxiety as a factor of the eyewitness testimony

Answer 3

• weapon focus effect due to surprise (Pickel)
• Real life studies show even less accuracy than lab studies so lab findings actually underestimate anxiety (Deffenbacher)
• Kind of crime affects accuracy - violent crimes more accurate than non violent (Halford and Milne)
• neurotic participants become less accurate with increased anxiety - so individual differences (Bothwell)
• Catastrophe model better than inverted U (Deffenbacher)

Question 4

What study did Johnson and Scott do?

Answer 4

The weapon focus effect - man with pen with grease or knife with blood comes out of room an argument could be heard in had to later identify the man

Question 5

What is the weapon focus effect?

Answer 5

The weapon creates anxiety and distracts attention away from other features (reduces accuracy of identification)

Question 6

What are the results from Johnson and Scotts study?

Answer 6

49% accuracy in identification in pen scenario and 33% in knife scenario

Question 7

Argument for anxiety having a positive effect on accuracy?

Answer 7

Evolutionary - says it would be helpful to remember high stress scenarios better so you can deal with the situations in the future
Bank tellers from bank robbery had best recall (Christianson and Hubinette)

Question 8

What is the Yerkes Dodson effect?

Answer 8

Arousal has negative effect on performance whilst very high or low but beneficial at moderate levels