EWT- Anxiety Flashcards
what is the AO1 - role of anxiety
- Many psychologists believe that anxiety experienced by the witness at the time of the incident (during the encoding/acquisition stage) leads to inaccuracies in EWT.
- Violent acts will increase anxiety in a witness and this may affect the reliability of their testimony.
- The weapon focus effect (WFE) - the presence of a gun or a knife creates something called tunnel theory - where all my attention goes to the weapon, so I ignore the peripheral details of the scene
what is the AO3 for role of anxiety
Research Support: Johnson + Scott
what was Johnson + Scott’s study
Procedure:
Pps were seated in a waiting room ready to take part in what they thought was lab study.
They overheard a heated argument in the next room.
→ demand characteristics as they can work out the experiment + then may feel less anxious
There were 2 conditions:
A man emerges carrying a pen, with grease all over his hands (low anxiety) (control)
A man emerges carrying a paper knife stained with blood (high anxiety)
Pps were then shown 50 photos and asked to identify the man who emerged.
→ 50 photos and ecologically valid and wouldn’t occur in real life, may explain why the results aren’t that different
what were the findings of Johnson + Scott’s study
- Low anxiety condition - 49%
- High anxiety condition - 33%
- Researchers described this as the weapon focus phenomenon - all attention goes to the weapon (because it provokes anxiety) and less attention is paid to everything else that is going on.
What was the AO1 point: alternative theory
- Other psychologists believe that anxiety has the opposite effect.
- They believe that the anxiety a witness experiences triggers the stress response within the body that activates fight or flight.
- Our brain becomes hyper-alert and memory capacity improves because of our physiological state- we become more aware of cues in the environment around us.
what was the AO3 for alternative theory
- Yuille and Cutshall (1986) interviewed 13 witnesses to a real-life shooting involving a shopkeeper and an armed thief. The shopkeeper was wounded but recovered, whereas the thief was shot dead.
- The interviews showed that:
- witnesses closest to the incident provided the most detail
- Witnesses gave impressively accurate accounts 5 months later
- Those who reported the most distress actually gave the most accurate reports
- Confounding variable → depending on where you are depends on what and how much you can report
what was the AO1 point: Christianson and Hubinette
- Questioned 110 witnesses (either staff or citizens) who between them had seen 22 bank robberies
- Staff (victims) were more accurate in their recall and detail about the event and the description of the robbers than citizens (bystanders)
- This superior recall was evident after 15 months
what was the AO3 for: Christianson and Hubinette
Implications:
- People are good at remembering highly stressful events if they occur in real life rather than in the artificial setting of a lab.
Or:
- The Yerkes Dodson Law would explain the findings.
- The relationship between arousal and performance is not linear.
- Low levels of arousal and really high levels of arousal produce lower levels of accuracy in EWT.
- There is a mid-level of arousal which would produce excellent accuracy of EWT.
- Perhaps the pps in these studies were at that optimum level.
(graph is the same shape as inverted U theory - same explanation with diff graph headings)
what is the AO3: is the weapon focus phenomenon relevant
- A study by Pickel (1998) found that it was unusualness of items that effected EWT not their potential for violence.
- The study involved a video of a hair-salon and found that pps were just as likely to show poor recall when a rubber chicken was present in the video as they were when a gun was present.
- Usual hairdressing items like scissors and a wallet elicited decent recall.
This study suggests that its not anxiety that effects recall but surprise.
