Anxiety Flashcards
Key term: anxiety
State of emotional and physical arousal. Emotions include worried thoughts and feelings of tension.
Normal reaction to stressful situations but can affect accuracy and detail of EWT
Inverted U hythoesis of performance and arousal- Yerkes-Dodson Law
- arousal/anxiety low= performance low
- arousal/anxiety high= performance low
- arousal/anxiety optimum= performance best
Johnson and Scott
- Weapon Focus
M- thought taking part in diff study, 2 conditions high/low anxiety. Low- overhead convo in room, man walked in with pen covered in grease. High- overheard heated convo in room, sound of glass breaking, man ran with knife and covered in blood
R- Low- 49% correctly identified man. High- 33% correctly identified man
What is weapon focus effect?
Anxiety that weapon creates draws focus of witnesses attention, meaning other details of event will be difficult to recall, reducing accuracy
How do Johnson and Scott support anxiety affecting accuracy of EWT?
High anxiety condition had worse recall than low anxiety condition as p’s would be more confused on gun rather than event
Evaluation of Johnson and Scott
Unethical- distress, deception
Lab- high degree control
Lab- artical setting, low eco validity
Anxiety having positive effect on recall
Anxiety triggers fight/flight response which increases alternes and improves focus and subsequently recall of event
Anxiety postive- Yurille and Cutshall Canada shooting supporting anxiety affecting
Shows anxiety improved their accuracy in recall
Evaluation of Yurille and Cutshall
Small sample- unrep
Canada- culture bias, ungen
Natural- high eco val, cannot control variables
7 point scale- other perceptions on how rate anxiety
Evaluation of points of anxiety
Weapon focus affect may be over-exaggerated
Inverted U explaination can be questioned
Supporting research
what research is there to suggest that weapon focus may be over-exaggerated?
Pickel (1998)
- Asked P’s to recall details after watching a video of a hairdressing salon.
- They inserted different stimuli into the video (a handgun, scissors, a wallet and a raw chicken).
- They found that recall was poor when the stimulus was unusual (raw chicken and handgun)
- therefore, questions validity, contradicts recall when anxiety supposedly highest
how can the inverted U explanation be questioned?
- The inverted U hypothesis assumes that physiological arousal is the only part of anxiety that impacts recall.
- Anxiety is more complex- worrying, fatigue, substance abuse, irritability can affect anxiety + recall
- influences accuracy of EWT bc validity
supporting research for anxiety negative effect (evaluation)
- Valentine and Mesout
- Horror Labyrinth at the London Dungeon, designed to be frightening with many ‘scares’ eg darkness, screams, gory models.
- questionnaires at the end to assess their level of self-reported anxiety, wore wireless heart monitors
- divided into two groups: high anxiety and low anxiety and asked to describe a person encountered in the Labyrinth.
- high-anxiety- recalled the fewest correct details + made more mistakes.
- 17% high-anxiety group correctly identified
- 75% correct identification- low-anxiety group.
- high anxiety affected accuracy of EWT
