Aniexty Affecting EWT Flashcards
Research support for the claim that anxiety can impair the accuracy of eyewitness testimon
E - For example, in Johnson and Scott’s (1976) experiment, participants were found to have better memories of a confederate’s appearance when they exited the scene of a staged argument carrying a pen rather than a bloody knife.
E – These findings suggest that anxiety impairs the accuracy of eyewitness testimony as the bloody knife presumably induced greater feelings of anxiety than a pen, and this high level of anxiety caused an impairment in their memory. This is exactly what is predicted by the Yerkes-Dodson law, which suggests a highly arousing state (caused by the knife) would impair performance on a memory task. This study’s findings can also be explained by the arousal/threat hypothesis’s explanation of the weapons focus effect, as participants likely experienced greater anxiety when seeing the knife than the pen, causing them to focus on it rather than the confederate’s appearance.
limitation of the research into the effect of anxiety on EWT is a lack of ecological validity.
E - Studying anxiety’s effect on EWT is difficult due to ethical constraints, preventing researchers from inducing high anxiety. Instead, most studies use video footage or staged crimes, Johnson and Scott’s study(1976) experiment.
E - It is difficult for these artificial tasks to capture the true nature of the anxiety experienced by eyewitnesses to a crime. In a real eyewitness situation, participants would experience strong emotions, and without these it may be difficult to generalise from laboratory research to real life eyewitness situations.
L – Therefore, the limitations of the supporting laboratory research mean we need to be cautious about what it tells us about the effect of anxiety on eyewitness testimony.
Some researchers argue that the reduction in the accuracy of EWT associated with the weapons focus effect is unrelated to anxiety.
E – Pickel (1998) demonstrated this by showing participants a video of a confederate entering a hair salon holding either scissors (low anxiety/not unusual), a handgun (high anxiety/unusual), or a raw chicken (low anxiety/unusual). Participants struggled equally to identify the confederate in the chicken and handgun conditions.
E - Finding challenges the arousal/threat hypothesis, as the handgun did not impair eyewitness accuracy more than the chicken. Since both had the same effect, the unusualness of the item, rather than anxiety, appears to drive the weapons focus effect. However, we must interpret Pickel’s findings with caution due to low ecological validity. Since participants only watched a video, they lacked the intense emotions of witnessing a real crime. Therefore, the study’s conclusion that anxiety is irrelevant to the weapons focus effect may not generalize beyond the laboratory.
