Anxiety & Eyewitness Testimony Flashcards
What is anxiety
A state of apprehension, uncertainty & fear resulting from a threatening situation
When anxiety is high what can it often impair?
- both physical & psychological functioning
-> several psychologists have suggested that the anxiety that occurs when witnessing a crime can prevent accurate & detailed recall of that crime
What could increase anxiety of a witness
The presence of a weapon during the crime
What is weapon focus effect
When witnesses who see a violent crime involving a weapon can often describe a criminals weapon in great detail, but not recall much about the actual criminal
Why does weapon focus effect happen?
People who observe a violent crime usually pay attention to the aspect that poses the most threat to them (the weapon) as it causes the most anxiety
Loftus (1979) procedure of whether anxiety affected a persons ability to recognise the perpetrator of a crime
-> experimental condition: pps heard a heated argument between two people, heard furniture being overturned, and broken glass. Then, a man came out carrying a letter opener covered in blood
-> control condition: participants overheard a conversation between two people about lab equipment failure, before a man with grease over his hands emerged carrying a pen
—> participants were asked to identify the person they had just seen from 50 photos
Loftus (1979) participants with anxiety vs not findings
33% of those in the bloody letter opening recognised the person
49% in the control recognised
Loftus argued this was a people focused on the bloody letter opener as it was a weapon that could pose a threat to them
AO3 of Anxiety P1 - supported by other research e.g. Loftus & Burns (1982)
Loftus & Burns allocate pp’s into one of two conditions
-> one group watched a violent short film (boy shot in the head)
-> other group watched a non violent short film of a crime
-> pps less accurate in recall when they saw the short film with a gun rather than the non-violent one
AO3 Anxiety P2: ecological validity (-) (Loftus study)
-> lacks ecological validity; although in Loftus’ study they were waiting outside the lab, they may have anticipated that something was going to happen, which could have affected real accuracy
Loftus Anxiety Study AO3 - P3: ethical guidelines (-)
-> pps were deceived about the nature of the experiment, & not protected from psychology had,
-> the ‘fake crime’ may have caused pp’s extreme distress, if they knew someone they knew had been involved in a knife crime
Anxiety AO3 P4 - unsupportive evidence - Yuille & Cutshall [1986]
-> investigated effect of anxiety in a real shooting, where one person killed & another seriously wounded
-> 21 witnesses were originally interviewed by investigating police and 13 of these witnesses, aged between 15 and 32, agreed to take part in Yuille and Cutshall’s follow-up interview five months later.
-> witnesses were accurate in their eyewitness accounts five months later and little change was found in their testimony.
-> witnesses avoided leading questions + those most distressed gave the most accurate account.
Anxiety AO3 - P5: individual differences (Christianson & Hubinette)
-> Some people have better recall when anxious.
-> study using 110 real life eyewitnesses who had witnessed 1/22 bank robberies.
-> Some were onlookers and some were bank clerks who had been directly threatened by the robbers.
-> It was found that victims were more accurate than onlookers in their description of the bank robbers.
What does the Yuille & Cutshaw study teach us
In real life cases leading questions and anxiety do not affect the accuracy of eyewitness testimony the same way they do in the laboratory.
