Accuracy of eyewitness testimony: Anxiety

Question 1

What causes a negative effect on memory?

Answer 1

Stress ( and anxiety)

Question 2

Which skills are not affected by stress/physiolocial arousal?

Answer 2

Automatic

Question 3

Key Study:
Johnson and Scott (1976)
Where did participants sit for the experiment?

Answer 3

In a waiting room

Question 4

Key Study:
Johnson and Scott (1976)
What did participants hear?

Answer 4

An argument in a adjoining room

Question 5

Key Study:
Johnson and Scott (1976)
What was the independent varibale?

Answer 5

A man running through the room with:
- A greasy pen
or
- A knife covered in blood

Question 6

Key Study:
Johnson and Scott (1976)
What were participants asked to do later on in the experiment?

Answer 6

Identify the man from a set of photographs

Question 7

Key Study:
Johnson and Scott (1976)
What did the fings support?

Answer 7

The idea of the weapon focus effect

Question 8

Key Study:
Johnson and Scott (1976)
What was the mean accuracy for the man with the pen condition?

Answer 8

49%

Question 9

Key Study:
Johnson and Scott (1976)
What was the mean accuracy in the knife condition?

Answer 9

33%

Question 10

Key Study:
Johnson and Scott (1976)
What did Loftus et al (1987) show?

Answer 10

That anxiety does focus attention on the central features of a crime
( eg the weapon)

Question 11

What is the alternative arguement to Johnson and Scott?

Answer 11

That high anxiety/arousal creates more enduring and accurate memories

Question 12

What does the evolutionary argument suggest?

Answer 12

It would adaptive to remember events that are emotionally so that you could identify similar situations in the future and recall how ro respond

Question 13

What did Christianson and Hubinette (1993) find evidence for?

Answer 13

Enhanced recall

Question 14

How did Christianson and Hubinette (1993) test their theory?

Answer 14

They questionned 58 real witnesses to bank robberies in Sweden

Question 15

What was the independent variable for Christianson and Hubinette (1993)?

Answer 15

Witnesses were either
- Victims ( bank teller)
or
- Bystanders ( employee or customer)

Question 16

What Christianson and Hubinette (1993) find about all witnesses memories?

Answer 16

Good memories for detail

better than 75% accurate recall

Question 17

Which witnesses had the best recall?

Christianson and Hubinette (1993)

Answer 17

The victims

bank tellers

Question 18

Who resolved the contradiction?

Answer 18

Kenneth Deffenbacher ( 1983)

Question 19

What did Kenneth Deffenbacher ( 1983) do to resolve?

Answer 19

Reviewed 21 of the effects of anxiety on eyewitness memory

Question 20

What did Kenneth Deffenbacher ( 1983) find about the studies?

Answer 20

10 of these studies had results that linked higher arousal levels increased eyewitness accuracy while 11 showed the opposite

Question 21

Weapon focus may not be caused by anxiety

Answer 21

A criticism of the weapon focus
- Pickel (1998), reduced accuracy of identification could be due to surprise rather than anxiety
> To test this participants watched a theif enter a hairdressing salon with:
> Scissors ( high threat, low surprise)
> Handgun ( high threat, high surprise)
> Wallet ( low threat, low surprise)
> A whole raw chicken ( low threat, high surprise)
Identification was least accurate in the high surprise conditions rather than high threat

Question 22

Real life versus lab studies

Answer 22

One of the strengths of Christianson and Hubinette was that it was a real crime study
- It may be that lab studies do not create the real levels of anxiety
- Deffenbacher et al. ( 2004) agree with this but found,
> Lab studies in general show that anxiety leads to reduced accuracy and that real-life studies are associated with an even greater loss in accuracy
Results from lab studies are valide, as they are supported by real-life

Question 23

Individual differences

Answer 23

Key extraneous variabkes in many studies of anxiety is emotionsal sensitivity
- Bothwell et al. (1987) participants were tested for personality characteristics and were labelled as either ‘neurotic’ (tend to be anxious quickly) or ‘stable’
- Stable participants showed rising levels of accuracy as stress levels increased
- Deffenbacher et al. (2004) the modest effect sizes shown in many studies of anxiety may be the result if averaging out low accuracy and high accuracy scores of sensitive and non-sensitive participants respectively
Suggest that individual differences may indeed play an important role in the accuracy of EWT