Accuracy of eyewitness testimony - Anxiety Flashcards
What is the weapon focus effect
The idea that victims focus on the weapon not other features, as it creates the most anxiety
Who tested the weapon focus effect using a man running through a room
Johnson and Scott
How did Johnson and Scott test the weapon focus effect
Johnson and Scott had participants sit in a waiting room where they heard an argument in the adjoining room and saw a man run through the room holding either a pen covered in grease (low anxiety) or a knife covered in blood (high anxiety). The participants were later asked to identify the man from a set of photographs
What did Johnson and Scott find
The mean accuracy for the group who saw the man holding a pen (low anxiety condition) was 49%, compared to 33% in the condition of the man holding a knife (high anxiety condition)
Who carried out a study similar to Johnson and Scott
Loftus et al monitored eyewitness eye movement and found that the prescence of a weapon caused attention to be physically drawn away from the person’s face and to the weapon itself
Why might anxiety/arousal actually create more accurate and enduring memories
Evolutionarily it would be adaptive to remember any emotionally important situations so you could recognise them again in real life
Who found evidence of anxiety creating better recall in a study of real life witnesses
Christianson and Hubinette
What did Christianson and Hubinette do
They found evidence of advanced recall in anxious situations by studying 58 witnesses from real life bank robberies in Sweded 4-15 months after the event. They were either bank tellers or bystanders, with higher and lower anxiety respectively. They found all witnesses had good memory of the event itself, and those with the most anxiety had the best memory. Christianson concluded that memory of negative events was better than of neutral ones
How did Deffenbacher mediate the two conflicting views of the effect of anxiety on eyewitness testimony
Suggested that the Yerkes-Dodson effect could take place, which is the idea that moderate anxiety/arousal could enhance eyewitness testimony, but when anxiety/arousal was too high accuracy would be reduced
Who suggested that the Yerkes-Dodson effect could take place with eyewitness testimony
Deffenbacher
Rather then the weapon focus effect, what may affect the recall of crimes
The violence of a crime, with Christianson and Hubinette’s study concerning real life crime, whilst many others did not include violence. Similarly research by Halford and Milne found that victims of violent crime recalled crime scene information better than victims of non-violent crime.
Who found that victims of violent crime recalled better than victims of non-violent crime
Halford and Milne
Why might the reduced accuracy of identification during crimes be due to suprise rather than anxiety
Pickel criticised the weapons focus effect by proposing that the reduced accuracy of identification was due to suprise rather than anxiety. He arranged for participants to see a theif entering a salon holding scissors, a handgun, a wallet or a whole raw chicken. Identification was least accurate in the suprise conditions, the gun or chicken, rather than in higher threat conditions like the scissors or handgun
How may individual differences impact research into eyewitness testimony and anxiety
Individual differences like emotional sensitivity may play a role. Bothwell et al had participants labelled as neurotic, meaning they became anxious quickly, or stable, meaning they were less emotionally sensitive. They found stable participants had rising accuracy with stress, while it was opposite for neurotic participants. Deffenbacher suggested that modest sample sizes would even out these differences
Who went around labelling his participants as neurotic (and maybe committing acts of witchcraft)
Bothwell
