EWT: Anxiety Flashcards
What is anxiety?
State of emotional and physical arousal
How does anxiety have a negative effect on recall?
Anxiety creates physiological arousal in the body, which prevents us paying attention to cues
Who studied the negative effects of anxiety on recall?
Johnson and Scott
What did Johnson and Scott do?
- Participants believed they were taking part in a lab study
- Low anxiety condition= participants in waiting room heard a casual conversation and saw a man walk past with grease on his hands, carrying a pen
- High anxiety condition= overheard a heated argument, heard the sound of breaking glass, and saw a man holding a knife, covered in blood
What did Johnson and Scott find and conclude?
- Picked the man from 50 photos
- 49% who saw him carrying the pen picked correctly
- 33% who saw him with a knife picked correctly
- Tunnel theory= people have enhanced memory for certain events (weapon= focus)
How does anxiety have a positive effect on recall?
Anxiety triggers the fight or flight response, which increases alertness, so more awareness of cues
Who researched the positive effect on anxiety on recall?
Yuille and Cutshall
What did Yuille and Cutshall do?
- Study of an actual shooting in a gun shop in Vancouver
- Shop owner shot a thief dead
- 21 witnesses- 13 participants
- Interviewed 4-5 months after the incident, and interviews were compared to police interviews
- Accuracy determined by number of details reported
- Participants to rate how stressed they were (7 point scale) and record any emotional problems since
What did Yuille and Cutshall find and conclude?
- Witnesses were very accurate, little variation in responses after 5 months
- Participants who reported high levels of stress were most accurate (88% vs 75% less stressed group)
- This suggests anxiety does not have a detrimental effect on accuracy of eyewitness testimony in a real-world context
How are contradictory findings explained?
- Yerkes and Dodson- relationship between emotional arousal and performance forms an ‘inverted U’
- Deffenbacher used Yerkes-Dodson law to explain findings
- When we witness a crime, we become physically and emotionally aroused
- Lower levels of arousal= lower levels of accuracy
What are the strengths of anxiety research on EWT?
- Support for negative effects
- Support for positive effects
What are the limitations of anxiety research on EWT?
- Unusualness, not anxiety
- Lack of control over research
- Problems with the inverted U theory
STRENGTH- Support for negative effects
I=evidence supports the view that anxiety has a negative effect on recall
D= Valentine and Mesout supports research on weapon focus. Used heart rate to divide participants into high/low anxiety groups. Anxiety disrupted ability to recall details about the actor in London Dungeon’s Labyrinth
E= suggests high levels of anxiety have negative effects on immediate recall
STRENGTH- Support for positive effects
I= evidence shows anxiety can have a positive effect on recall
D= Christianson and Hubinette interviewed 58 witnesses to actual bank robberies in Sweden. Some directly involved. Those directly involved were more accurate in recall, than those indirectly involved. Recall was 75% accurate across all witnesses
E= findings confirm anxiety does not reduce recall, and instead enhances it
LIMITATION- Unusualness not anxiety
I= Johnson and Scott study may have not tested anxiety
D= participants focused on the weapon perhaps due to surprise rather than fear. Pickel conducted an experiment using scissors, handgun, wallet and chicken in a hairdressing salon video. Eyewitness accuracy was poorer in high unusualness conditions
E= suggests the weapon focus effect is due to unusualness, rather than anxiety, so tells us nothing about effects of anxiety on EWT
