ewt anxiety

Question 1

effects of anxiety

Answer 1

• strong emotional/ physical effects
• doesn’t know if makes eyewitness recall better/ worse

Question 2

negative effect

Answer 2

• creates physiological arousal in body which prevents us from paying attention to important cues, so recall is worse

Question 3

negative- case study

Answer 3

Craig Johnson and William Scott

Question 4

Craig johnson and William Scott 1976 procedure

Answer 4

• pps =thought they were taking part in lab study
• while in waiting room, pps in low anxiety condition heard a casual conversation in next room then saw a man walk past them carrying a pen with grease on ahdns

high anxiety condition
- heated argument, with sound of breaking glass, man walked out of the room, holding a knife covered in blood

Question 5

Craig johnson and William Scott findings + conclusions

Answer 5

• pps picked out man from set of 50 pics,
• 49% who had seen man carrying pen was able to identify him
• 33% for ppts who saw him old a knife

Question 6

positive effect

Answer 6

• fight or flight triggered,
• may improve memory for the event as we become more aware of cues in situation

Question 7

John yuille and Judith cutshall - positive effect

prodecure

Answer 7

• conducted study of an actual shooting in gun shop in Vancouver
• shop owner shot a thief dead
• 21 witnesses
  -13 took part in study
• interviewed 4/5 months after incident,
• interviews compare with ones they gave police at the time

Question 8

John yuille and Judith cutshall

findings

Answer 8

• they were very accurate in their accounts, even after 5 months
• those pps who reported highest level of stress = mostaccuracte
• ## suggests that anxiety doesn’t have a detrimental effect on the accuracy of eyewitness memory in a real world context , may even enhance it

Question 9

limitation

Answer 9

P - One limitation of the study by Johnson & Scott is that it may not have tested anxiety.

E - The reason pps focused on the weapon may be because they were surprised at what they saw rather than scared.

E - Pickel (1998) conducted an experiment using scissors, a handgun, a wallet or a raw chicken as the hand held items in a hairdressing salon (where scissors would be high anxiety, low unusualness). Eyewitness accuracy was significantly poorer in the high unusualness conditions (chicken and handgun).

L - This suggests that the weapon focus effect is due to unusualness rather than anxiety/threat and therefore tells us nothing specifically about the effects of anxiety on EWT.

Question 10

strength

Answer 10

P - One strength is evidence supporting the view that anxiety has a negative effect on the accuracy of recall.

E - Valentine & Mesout (2009) supports the research on weapon focus, finding negative effects on recall. The researchers used an objective measure (heart rate) to divide pps into high and low anxiety groups.

E - In this study anxiety clearly disrupted the pps ability to recall details about the actor in the London Dungeon’s Labyrinth.

L - This suggests that a high level of anxiety does have a negative effect on the immediate eyewitness recall of a stressful event.

Question 11

strength

Answer 11

P - Another strength is evidence showing that anxiety can have positive effects on the accuracy of recall.

E - Christianson et al (1993) interviewed 58 witnesses to actual bank robberies in Sweden. Some of the witnesses were directly involved (e.g. bank workers) and some were indirectly involved (e.g. bystanders).

E - The researchers assumed that those directly involved would experience the most anxiety. It was found that recall was more than 75% accurate across all witnesses. The direct victims (most anxious) were even more accurate.

L - These findings from actual crimes confirm that anxiety does not reduce the accuracy of recall for EWT and may even enhance it.