Anxiety

Question 1

Anxiety

Answer 1

“A state of emotional and physical arousal”

Question 2

Anxiety has a negative effect in recall

Answer 2

• Physiological arousal in the body prevents us from paying attention to important cues- recall is worse.
• Looking at the effect of anxiety and EWT when a weapon is present.
• The weapon creates anxiety which reduces the witness’s recall of the event.

Question 3

Craig Johnson and William Scott (1976)
Procedure

Answer 3

• The participants believed that they were taking part in a lab experiment and were seated in the waiting room.
• There were two different groups:
  High-anxiety condition= overheard a heated argument, smashed glass and then a man walking out of the room, with an knife, covered in blood.
  Low-anxiety condition= overheard a casual conversation and then a man walking out of the room carrying a pen with grease on his hands.

Question 4

Findings: Craig Johnson and William Scott

Answer 4

• The participants were shown 50 photos and they had to correctly pick out the man they had seen.
• 49% who had seen the man carrying the pen were able to identify him.
• 33% were able to identify the man with the knife/blood

Question 5

The tunnel theory

Answer 5

This argues that people have enhanced memory for central events- weapon focus as a result of anxiety can have this effect.

Question 6

Anxiety has a positive effect on recall

Answer 6

• Witnessing a stressful event creates anxiety through physiological arousal within the body
• Fight or flight is triggered- this may improve memory as we become aware of cues in the situation.

Question 7

John Yuille and Judith Cutshall (1986)
Procedure

Answer 7

• Study of an actual shooting in a gun shop in Vancouver, Canada
• The shop owner shot the thief dead
• 21 witnesses- 13 took part in the study
• They were interviewed 4/5 months after the vent and these interviews were compared to the original police interviews
• Accuracy measure- number of details reported in each account.
• Had to rate how stressful the situation was (7 point scale) and whether they had any emotional problems (sleeplessness).

Question 8

John Yuille and Judith Cutshall (1986)
Findings and conclusion

Answer 8

• Witnesses were very accurate and very little changed in recall- some details were less accurate (colours, age, height, weight)
• Those who reported the highest levels of stress were most accurate
• This suggested that anxiety does not have a detrimental effect on the accuracy of eyewitness memory and may even enhance it.

Question 9

Yerkes and Dobson (1908)

Answer 9

The inverted U theory
- Looked at the relationship between emotional arousal and performance/recall.

Question 10

Deffenbacher (1983)

Answer 10

Reviewed 21 studies of EWT and notified contradictory findings of the effects of anxiety.

Question 11

Evaluation of Johnson and Scott

Answer 11

• One limitation of this study was that it may not have tested anxiety.
• Focusing on the object being carried may have been due to surprise rather than being scared.

Question 12

Kerri Pickel (1998)

Answer 12

• Conducted an experiment in a hairdressers using the following four items: a handgun, a wallet, scissors and a raw chicken.
• High anxiety, low unusualness = scissors
• High unusualness = chicken/handgun
• Eyewitness accuracy was significantly poorer in the high unusualness conditions.
• This suggests that the weapon focus effect is due to unusualness rather than anxiety.

Question 13

Tim Valentine and Jan Mesout (2009)

Answer 13

• Supports the research on weapon focus- negative effects on recall.
• They used an objective measure (heart rate) to divide the participants into high and low anxiety level groups.
• In the study anxiety disrupted the participants ability to recall details about the actor in the London Dungeon.
• Therefore, high levels of anxiety do have a negative effect on the immediate eyewitness recall of a stressful event.

Question 14

Sven-Ake Christianson and Birgitta Hubinette (1993)

Answer 14

• Interviewed 58 witnesses to actual bank robberies in Sweden.
  
  • Some witnesses were directly involved (eg. Bank worker) and others were indirectly involved (eg. Bystander).
  • The researchers assumed (hypothesised) that those directly involved would experience the most anxiety.
  • It as found that recall was more than 75% accurate across all witnesses.
  • The direct victims (experiencing higher anxiety) were even more accurate.
  • These findings from actual crimes show that anxiety does not reduce the accuracy of recall and may even enhance it.

Question 15

Positive effects counterpoint

Answer 15

• Interviewed their participants several months after the event had taken place- between 4-15 months.
  
  • The researchers had no control over the participants in this time- post-event discussion/news reports.
  • Therefore the effects of anxiety may have been overwhelmed by other factors and impossible to accurately assess.
  • Therefore it is possible that a lack of control over confounding variables may be responsible for the findings, invalidating the research.