EWT: Anxiety Flashcards
Outline the procedure in Johnson and Scott (1976) study.
waiting room
Participants sat in a waiting room beliveing they were going to take part in a lab study.
Low-anxiety condition: Participants heard a casual conversation and then saw a man walk through the room carrying a pen with grease on his hands.
High-anxiety condition: Participants heard a heated arguement accompanied by the sound of breaking glass. A man then walked through the room with a knife in his hand covered in blood.
( creates anxiety and weapon focus )
Participants were then asked to pick the man from a set of 50 photographs.
Outline the findings and conclusion of this study.
49% of the low anxiety, and 33% of the high anxiety variation were able to identify the man.
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.
Outline the procedure in Yuille and Cutshalls (1986) study on positive effects of anxiety.
In an actual crime a gun shop owner shot a thief dead. Out of the 21 witnesses,13 agreed to participate in the study.
Paticipants were interviewed 4-5 months after the incident, and their recall was compared to that of the police interview on the day.
Witnesses rated how stressed they felt at the time of the incident.
Outline the findings and conclusions in Yuille and Cutshalls study.
Witnesses were very accurate in what they recalled, and there was little change after 5 months.
Some details were less accurate such as age.
Participants who reported highest levels of stress were most accurate (88% compared to the less stressed group 75%).
Anxiety does not appear to reduce the accuracy of EWT for a real world event and may even enhance it.
What is the inverted-U theory?
This theory states that performance will increase with stress, but only to a certrian point, where it decreases drastically.
Explain what Deffenbacher (1983) suggested about the contradictionary findings.
He reviewed 21 studies with contradicting findings on the effect of anxiety on recall.
He suggested that both high and low levels of anxiety cause poor recall, but the optimum levels can lead to very good recall.
What is one limitation of the Anxiety explanation?
One limitation is that anxiety may not be relevant to weapon focus.
- Johnson and scotts participants may have been focused on the weapon not becuase they were anxious but because they were surprised.
- Pickel (1998) found accuracy in identifying the criminal was the poorest when the object in their hand was unexpected.
- This suggests that the weapons effect is due to unusuality rather than anxiety and tells us nothing about the specific effects of anxiety on recall
What is one stength of the anxiety explanation?
One strength is supporting evidence for negative effects
-Valentine (2009) used heart rate to divide visitors to the London Dungeons Labyrinth into low and high anxiety groups.
- High anxiety participants were less accurate than low anxiety in describing and identifying a target person.
- This supports the claim that anxiety has a negative effect of immediate eyewitness recall of a stressful situation.
What is another strentgh for the Anxiety explanation?
Supporting evidence for positive effects.
- Christianson (1993) interviewed actual witnesses to a bank robberies - some were direct victims and some were bystanders.
- They found more than 75% of accurate recall across all witnesses. Direct witnesses were more accurate.
- This suggests that anxiety does not affect the accuracy of eyewitness recall and may even enhance it.
