Anxiety and EWT Flashcards
What was the method of Johnson & Scott’s study?
- 2 experimental conditions: one with a weapon, one without. PPs were asked to sit outside a lab where they though they heard a genuine discussion between 2 people
- Low anxiety: no weapon, conversation was peaceful about office equipment. When they were finished a man emerged holding a pen with grease on his hands
- High anxiety: conversation was more heated, PPs heard breaking glass and a man emerged holding a bloody knife
- All PPs then asked to identify man that emerged from room from 50 photos
What were the findings and conclusions of Johnson & Scott’s study?
FINDINGS: in low anxiety condition 44% of PPs could identify the man accurately. In the high anxiety condition recall was much lower at 33%
CONCLUSIONS: shows that heightened anxiety and emotional arousal causes eyewitness to have a less accurate recall of a crime event. This is due to the weapon focus effect which is when the weapon distracts attention from the person holding it and other aspects of the environment
What was the method of Loftus & Burns’ study?
- PPs watched a film of a simulated robbery
- Some watched a non-violent version whereas others watched a violent version where a boy was shot in the face
What were the findings and conclusions of Loftus and Burns’ study?
FINDINGS: when questionned afterwards, those who watched the non-violent version recalled significantly more details than those who watched the violent version
CONCLUSIONS: shows that high anxiety + emotional arousal due to the shock of certain events leads to a disruption of memory storage and thus less recall of details from violent crime scenes
What is a strength?
- One strength of research into anxiety on EWT is that studies like Loftus’ are replicable
- Loftus tended to use a range of controlled experiments when researching EWT
- Because of the control over extraneous variables and the use of standardised procedures in much of Loftus’ research it is easy to replicate
- e.g. in Loftus and Burns’ study all pps in one condition would watch the exact same video
- This is a strength because it allows other reasearchers to replicate the study to check for consistent results
- Moreover, Loftus herself conducted a large number of studies into EWT and found the same outcome - high anxiety distorts the accurace of EWT
- Therefore, by using high control and standardised procedure Loftus has been able to produce highly replicable results
How is artificiality a weakness?
- A weakness is that studies are often artificial
- Loftus and Burns used a video of a simulated robbery from practical and ethical reasons
- However it is difficult to reproduce real life EWT conditions in a lab as real life events often take place unexpectedly and in an atmosphere of high tension
- This is a problem as these differences mean the results may not be applicable to real life where events may be recalled differents than in a lab
- Furthermore, Foster et al found that if pps thought they were watching a real life robbery important to a real trial, identification of the robber was much more accurate than if they did not
- Therefore, research in controlled settings lack ecological validity and thus we can’t use them to better understand how anxiety affects EWT in real life
- As a result, the overall validity of the research decreases
How are ethical issues a weakness?
- A weakness is that the studies often have ethical issues
- The methods used to induce anxiety such as showing violent films are likely to cause mild psychological harm
- Moreover, PPs were also decieved as they believed the witnessed crime was real
- This is a weakness because psychologists are not allowed to cause unnecessary psychological harm in their research as that may negatively affect PPs psychological health
- The fact that PPs were deceived is a weakness because although they did gain consent to take part, PPs could not give informed consent
- As the studies break ethical guidelines they decrease in credibility
How is contradictory real life research a weakness?
- One weakness is that there is contradictory real life research
- Christianson and Hubinette conducted a natural experiment where they found that emotional arousal may actually enhance accuracy of memory
- Questioned 110 real witnesses to 22 real bank robberies and found that witnesses who had been threatened in some way were much more accurate in their recall of details than those who has been onlookers and less emotionally aroused
- This is a weakness because it directly refutes Loftus’ findings that high anxiety distorts EWT. In fact it shows that anxiety actually enhances EWT in real life
- This decreases the validity of Loftus’ research
