EWT - anxiety

Question 1

What does anxiety cause ?

Answer 1

A psychological arousal

Question 2

What can increase your arousal level ?

Answer 2

Real life crimes

Question 3

How can real life crimes increase your arousal level ?

Answer 3

Anxiety may divert attention away from the focus such as the person’s face

Question 4

Johnson and scott weapon focus procedure

Answer 4

Ps thought they were taking part in a lab study
While seated in a waiting room ps that were now in the low anxiety condition heard a convo in the next room and then saw a man walk out carrying a pen and had grease on his hand
In the high anxiety condition, ps overheard a heated argument, accompanied by the sound of breaking glass. A man then walked out holding a knife covered in blood

Question 5

Johnson and scott findings

Answer 5

Ps oicked out the man from a set of 50 photos
49% of ps who saw the man with the pen were able to identify him
33% of ps who saw the man with the knife were able to identify him

Question 6

Yuille and cutshall procedure

Answer 6

Confucted a study of an actual shooting in a gun shop in vancouver canada where the shop owner shot the thief dead and there were 21 witnesses and 13 took part
They were interviewed 4 to 5 months afrer the event and those interviews were compared to actual police interviews that they did
Accuracy was determined by the number of details recalled in each account
Witnesses also had to rank how stressed they felt at the time on a scale from 1-7 and whether they had any emotional problems since the event

Question 7

Yuille and cutshall findings

Answer 7

Witnesses were very accurate in their accounts and there was very little change in the amount recalled or accuracy after 5 months
Thoigh some details were less accurate such as recollection of the colour of items ans age/height/weight estimates
Those who reported the highest level of anxiety were most accurate 88% compared to 75% for less stress which suggests anxiety does not have an efect on strength of ewt

Question 8

Weapon focus evaluation
Pickel

Answer 8

Pickel conducted an experiment using scissors, a handgun and a wallett or raw chicken as the hand held item of a hairdressing salon video. Eyewitness accuracy was significantly poorer in the high unusualness conditions (chicken and handgun)

Question 9

What does pickels study suggest ?

Answer 9

Suggests that weapon focus effect is due to unusualness rather than anxiety so tells us nothing specific about the effects of anxiety on EWT