Anxiety

Question 1

What is Anxiety?

Answer 1

• A state of emotional or physical arousal.
• Physical changes occur which include an increased heart rate and sweatiness.

Question 2

What is Weapon Focus Effect?

Answer 2

• Research shows that the anxiety of seeing a weapon focusses all of an individuals attention to the weapon and the person will not be able to recall much else of a situation.

Question 3

What was the research of anxiety having a ‘Negative Effect’?

Answer 3

• Research had 2 conditions, one was a no weapon and the other has a weapon condition.
• In the no weapon, participants overheard an argument and they saw an individual leave the room holding a pen.
• In the weapon condition, they heard an argument with the sound of breaking glass followed by someone leaving the room holding a bloodied letter opener.
• Both groups were asked to identify the person out of 50 photos.
• Found that the person holding the pen was correctly identified 49% of the time and those who had witnessed the weapon correctly identified the man 33% of the time.

Question 4

Can anxiety have both a negative and positive effect?

Answer 4

• Yes

Question 5

What was the research of anxiety having a ‘Positive Effect’?

Answer 5

• Conducted a study from a real life shooting where the shop owner and the their were shot dead.
• 13 out of the 21 witnesses agreed to take part
• They were interviewed 4-5 months after it had happened and their answers were compared to their original EWT interviews with police at the time of the shooting.
• Accuracy was determined by the amount of correctly reported details in the account
• Their stress levels were monitored by asking them to rank on a 7 point scale how stressed they were.
• Participants who reported the highest levels of stress were the most accurate (88%) compared to the less stressed group (75%).

Question 6

What is the ‘Deffenbacher curve’?

Answer 6

• It is an inverted-U hypothesis which suggests that the relationship between emotional arousal and performance look like an inverted U.
• That there is an optimum point for anxiety and that there is good stress and bad stress on a person.

Question 7

Evaluate Anxiety.

Answer 7

• The field studies conducted around the research can lack control. Usually had to use real-life eyewitnesses sometime after the event. This means that witnesses may exaggerate their own memories or even create false ones based on influences around them. Therefore it may not be anxiety that is impacting their accounts.
• There are ethical issues to consider. Creating anxiety by creating lab experiments is risky and unethical as it could subject the participant to psychological harm.
• It could be distressing to real life eyewitnesses to re-live traumatic events.