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 –> thought they had interview

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

Pickel (1998)

People focus on weapon due to being surprised rather than scared.

230 students were shown a reconstructed video of a hair salon incident where object of the perpetrator was changed each time.

More unusual the object, the more details forgotten by students.

Independent group design.

Not due to anxiety but unusualness.

Question 7

Evaluation:

Christianson and Hubinette

Answer 7

Contradictory evidence

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.

Optimum level of emotional arousal –> optimal response

Applied to EWT by Deffenbacher (1983)

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: Ethics

Answer 10

Breaches of numerous ethical guidelines

Johnson + Scott = ppts lied to

lack of protection from harm

bloodied knife = extreme anxiety

Extreme stress –> knife crime

Question 11

real life heros

Yuille and Cutshall (1986)

Answer 11

Field experiment —–> real life crime using witnesses who saw a gun shooting.
Out of 21 witnesses, 13 agreed to research interview. 2 misleading questions were asked
Central witnesses memory was 84.6 % accurate and peripheral witnesses were 79% accurate.
10/13 rejected misleading questions.