Accuracy of eyewitness testimony: anxiety

Question 1

what is anxiety?

Answer 1

an unpleasant emotional state that is often accompanied by increased heart rate and rapid breathing i.e physiological arousal

Question 2

what was the procedure of Johnson and Scott’s 1976 study on the weapon focus effect

Answer 2

• they asked participants to sit in a waiting room where they heard an argument in an adjoining room
• they then saw a man run through the run carrying either a pen covered in grease (low anxiety condition) or a knife covered in blood (high anxiety ‘weapon focus condition’
• participants were later asked to identify the man from a set of photographs

Question 3

Awhat were the findings of Johnson and Scott’s 1976 study?

Answer 3

• the findings supported the idea of the weapon focus effect
• mean accuracy was 49% in identifying the man in the pen condition compared with 33% accuracy in the knife condition
• Loftus et al 1987 showed that anxiety does focus attention of central features of a crime
• researchers monitored eyewitness’ eye movements and found that the presence of a weapon caused attention to be physically drawn towards the weapon itself and away from other things such as the person’s face

Question 4

What is the alternative argument about eye witness testimony?

Answer 4

high anxiety/arousal creates more enduring and accurate memories

Question 5

Name a study that shows anxiety in a positive light?

Answer 5

Christianson and Hubinette 1983
- they questioned 58 real witnesses to bank robbers in Sweden
- the witnesses were either victims (bank teller) or bystanders (employee or customers) i.e high and low anxiety respectively
- the interviews were conducted 4-15 months after the robberies
- the researchers found that all witnesses showed generally good memories for the details of the robbery itself (better than 75% accurate recall). Those witnesses who were most anxious (victims) had the best recall of all. This shows that anxiety does not reduce accuracy of recall

Question 6

How would you resolve the contradiction of eye-witness testimony?

Answer 6

Deffenbacher 1983 reviewed 21 studies of the effects of anxiety on eyewitness testimony. He found that 10 of these studies had results linked to higher arousal levels to increased eyewitness accuracy whilst 11 showed the opposite.
Deffenbacher suggested the yerkes-Dodson effect can account for this. According to this principle there would be occasions when anxiety/arousal is only moderate and then eyewitness accuracy would be enhanced. When anciety/arousal is too extreme then accuracy will be reduced

Question 7

Name a first AO3 point

Answer 7

individual differences
One extraneous variable in many studies of anxiety is emotional sensitivity
Bothwell et al 1987 had participants tested for personality characteristics.
Some were labelled ‘neurotic’ (tended to be anxious quickly) or ‘stable’ (less emotionally sensitive).
It was found that the stable participants showed increasing levels of accuracy as stress levels increased whereas the opposite was true of neurotics
These studies suggest that individual differences may indeed play an important role in the accuracy of EWT

Question 8

Name a second AO3 point

Answer 8

Weapon focus may not be caused by anxiety
Pickel in 1998 suggested that reduce accuracy of identification could be due to surprise rather than anxiety
To test this she arranged participants to watch a thief enter a hairdressing salon carrying scissors (high threat, low surprise) handgun (high threat, high surprise) wallet (low threat, low surprise) or a whole raw chicken (low threat, high surprise). Identification was least accurate in the high surprise conditions rather than the high threat.
Supports the notion that the weapon focus effect is based on surprise rather than anxiety

Question 9

Name a third evaluation point

Answer 9

Critics of the weapon focus effect suggest that the violence of a crime may affect the accuracy of recall
The study of Christianson and Hubinette concerned a violent real-life crime. Many other studies of anxiety and accuracy of identification, even the real life ones did not involve violence. Like Christianson and Hubinette, Halford and Milne in 2005 found that victims of violent crimes were more accurate in their recall of crime scene information than victims of non-violent crimes.
This shows that there is no simple about the effect of anxiety on accuracy of eyewitness testimoney

Question 10

what is the weapon focus effect?

Answer 10

occurs when a weapon distracts eyewitnesses, harming memory for the perpetrator and other details.

Question 11

Name a final evaluation point?

Answer 11

There is supporting evidence of the effectiveness of lab experiments in relation to the accuracy of eyewitness testimony. Debffenbacher in 2004 reviewed 34 case studies and found that lab studies in general lead to a reduction in accuracy of eyewitness testimony and that real life studies are associated with an even greater loss in accuracy