EWT - Anxiety

Question 1

Johnson and Scott - Negative Effect

Answer 1

PROCEDURE

1) Pps sat in a waiting room believing they were going to take part in a lab study.
• Low-anxiety condition - pps heard a casual convo and
then saw a man walk through the waiting room carrying a pen with grease on his hands.
• High-anxiety condition - a heated argument was accompanied by the sound of breaking glass. A man then walked through the room holding a knife covered in blood (creates anxiety and ‘weapon focus’).

Pps were later asked to pick the man from a set of 50 photographs.

Question 2

Johnson and Scott - Findings

Answer 2

1) 49% of participants in the low-anxiety condition and 33% of high-anxiety participants were able to identify the man.
2) The tunnel theory of memory argues that people have enhanced memory for central events. Weapon focus as a result of anxiety can have this effect.

Question 3

Yuille and Cutshall - Positive Effect

Answer 3

PROCEDURE

1) In an actual crime a gun-shop owner shot a thief dead. There were 21 witnesses, 13 agreed to participate in the study.
Pps were interviewed 4-5 months after incident. The info recalled was compared to the police interviews at the time of the shooting.
2) Witnesses rated how stressed they felt at the time of the incident.

Question 4

Yuille and Cutshall - Findings

Answer 4

1) Witnesses were very accurate in what they recalled and there was little change after 5 months. Some details were less accurate, e.g. age/ weight/height.

2) Participants who reported the highest levels of stress were most accurate (about 88% compared to 75% for the less-stressed group).
Anxiety does not appear to reduce the accuracy of EWT for a real-world event and may even enhance it.

Question 5

LIMITATION of Explanation

Answer 5

ANXIETY MAY NOT BE RELEVANT TO WEAPAN FOCUS

1) Johnson and Scott’s participants may have focused on the weapon not because they were anxious but because they were surprised.
2) Pickel (1998) found accuracy in identifying the ‘criminal’ was
poorest when the object in their hand was unexpected e.g. raw chicken and a gun in a hairdressers (both
unusual).
—> This suggests the weapons effect is due to unusualness rather than anxiety/threat and so tells us nothing about the specific effects of anxiety on recall.

Question 6

STRENGTH of Negative Effects

Answer 6

SUPPORTING EVIDENCE

1) Valentine and Mesout (2009) used heart rate (objective measure) to divide visitors to the
London Dungeon’s Labyrinth into low- and high-anxiety groups.
2) High-anxiety pps were less
accurate than low-anxiety in describing and identifying a
target person.
—> This supports the claim that anxiety has a negative effect on immediate eyewitness recall of a stressful event.

Question 7

STRENGTH of Positive Effects

Answer 7

SUPPORTING EVIDENCE

1) Researchers interviewed actual
witnesses to bank robberies - some were direct victims (high
anxiety) and others were bystanders (less anxiety).
2) They found more than
75% accurate recall
across all witnesses.
Direct victims (most
anxious were even
more accurate.
—> This suggests that
anxiety does not
affect the accuracy of
eyewitness recall and
may even enhance it.

COUNTERPOINT

1) The researchers interviewed witnesses long after the event.
Many things happened that the researchers could not control (e.g. post-event discussions).
2) Therefore lack of control over confounding variables may be responsible for the (in)accuracy of recall, not anxiety.