Anxiety

Question 1

What is anxiety?

Answer 1

Unpleasant emotional state with the fear something bad is going to happen.

Question 2

What is weapon focus?

Answer 2

Eye not taken off weapon to see where it is pointing which leads to tunnel vision.
Peripheral details are missed —> Memory of event is distorted.

Question 3

Johnson and Scott 1976

Answer 3

PPTs overheard argument in lab and man with pen emerged.
PPTs overheard argument in lab and man with blooded knife emerged.

Given 50 photos and asked to identify man who came out of the lab

Question 4

Findings

Answer 4

Man with pen —- 49% identified correct man
Man with knife —— 33% identified correct man

Question 5

Conclusion

Answer 5

Due to weapon focus phenonemon as witness concentrates on weapon which distracts the from the appearance of the perpetrator.

Question 6

weakness cuz of unusual pickel 😋

Evaluation

Answer 6

230 students were shown a reconstructed video of a hair salon incident where object of the perpetrator was changed each time.
More unusal the object, the more details forgotten by students.
Independant group design.

Question 7

Christianson and Hubinette

Answer 7

Questioned 110 witnesses in 22 bank robberies.
Victims more accurate in recall compared to bystanders even after 15 months.
Suggests that people are good at remembering stressful situations in real life.

Question 8

What is the Yerkes Dodson Law?

Answer 8

Recall increases with anxiety up till a certain point, then recall will decrease again.

Question 9

Evaluation points:

Answer 9

Anxiety cannot be accurately measured.
Lab studies = demand characteristics
Field studies —-> lack of controls

Breaches in ethical guidelines. Lots of deception.

Assumptions that bystanders are less anxious than victims.
Lack of external validity

Question 10

Evaluation by Pickel

Answer 10

Contradictory research by Pickel.
Weapon focus may not be relevant.
Recall decreases due to unusualness of object rather than anxiety.