EWT: Anxiety

Question 1

What is anxiety?

Answer 1

state of emotional and physical arousal

• include worried thoughts and feelings of tension, increased heart rate and sweatiness.

Question 2

What is Yerkes Dodson Law

Answer 2

moderate anxiety is associated with better recall than very high or very low anxiety

• very high levels of arousal reduce performance on all kinds of tasks

Question 3

What is weapon focus

Answer 3

witnesses’ attention is typically focused on any weapon as a result of fear for their own safety.
So there is a lack of attention to the appearance of the perpetrator

Question 4

What was the aim of Johnson and Scotts study

Answer 4

investigate if the presence of a weapon affects the accuracy of EWT

Question 5

What was the method of Johnson and Scotts study

Answer 5

Ppts sat in a waiting room where they heard an argument in another room and then saw a man running through the room carrying either a pen covered in grease (low anxiety condition) or a knife covered in blood (high anxiety ‘weapon focus’ condition)

Participants were later asked to identify the man from a set of photographs.

Question 6

What were the results of Johnson and Scotts study

Answer 6

Mean accuracy was 49% in identifying the man in the pen condition, compared with 33% accuracy in the knife condition.

The researcher monitored eye movements and found that the presence of a weapon caused attention towards the weapon taking It away from the persons face

Question 7

What was the conclusion of Johnson and Scotts study

Answer 7

Weapon focus leads to less accurate recall of the person committing the crime because of the anxiety that the witness experiences