Eye Witness Testimony: Anxiety

Question 1

What is meant by EWT?

Answer 1

• EWT is the memory of an incident or event from someone who was actually there at the time.

Question 2

The effects of anxiety on EWT

Answer 2

• Anxiety has strong emotional and physical effects.
• It is unclear whether these effects make EW recall better or worse.
• There is research to support both possibilities.

Negative:
- Anxiety creates physiological arousal in the body which prevents us paying attention to important cues so recall is worse.

Positive:
- Anxiety= triggers fight or flight response, which increases alertness and improves our memory of the event as we become more aware of the cues in the situation.

Question 3

Research: weapon focus effect (what?)

Answer 3

• One approach to studying anxiety and EWT has been to look at the effect of weapons (which create anxiety) on the recall of the witness.

Question 4

Research: Johnson and Scott (Procedure)

Answer 4

• Led ppts to believe they were taking part in a lab study.
• Whilst in the waiting room, ppts heard an argument in the next room.
  1. ‘Low anxiety’ condition= a man walked through the waiting area carrying a pen with grease on his hands.
  2. ‘High anxiety’ condition= argument accompanied by the sound of breaking glass.
• A man walked through waiting area carrying a paper knife covered in blood.

Question 5

Research: Johnson & Scott (findings)

Answer 5

• The ppts later picked out the man from a set of 50 photos.
• 49% of ppts who had experienced the low anxiety condition could identify the man, whereas in the high anxiety condition only 33% could identify the man.
• The tunnel theory of memory argues that the witnesses attention narrows to focus on a weapon, because it is a source of anxiety.

Question 6

Yerkes- Dodson curve

Answer 6

• This inverted U theory states that performance will increase with stress, but only to a certain point where it decreases dramatically.

Question 7

Yerkes- Dodson curve applied to EWT’s.

Answer 7

• Lower levels of anxiety produce lower levels of recall accuracy.
  -But memory becomes more accurate as the level of anxiety experienced increases.
• However, there becomes a point where the optimal level of anxiety is reached. This is the point of maximum accuracy.
• If an eyewitness experiences more stress than this, then their recall of the event suffers a drastic decline.

Question 8

Real life research into effects of anxiety: Yuille & Cutshall (Procedure)

Answer 8

• Conducted a study of a real life shooting in a gun shop in Vancouver (shop owner shot thief dead).
• 13 ppts (witnesses that gave informed consent).
• Interviews held 4-5 months after the incident + compared to the original police interviews made at the time.
• Witnesses were also asked how stressed they felt and the time of the incident (using 7 point scale).
• They were also asked if they had experienced any emotional problems since the event (e.g. sleeplessness).

Question 9

Real life research into the effects of anxiety: Yuille & Cutshall (Findings).

Answer 9

• Witness were very accurate in their accounts + there was little change in the amount or accuracy of info after 5 months.
• The ppts who reported the highest levels of stress were most accurate (about 88% compared to 75% for the less-stressed group).

Question 10

Evaluation: Johnson & Scott

Answer 10

Point= Weapon focus affect may not be relevant.
- May test surprise rather than anxiety.
- The reason ppts focus on the weapon may be because they are surprised rather than scared.
- Pickel= used various items in a hairdressers including scissors (normal in a hairdressing salon- low anxiety), handgun and raw chicken.
- Eyewitness accuracy was significantly poorer in the high unusualness condition (chicken and handgun).
- This suggests that the weapon focus effect is due to surprise rather than anxiety, therefore we cannot really establish cause and effect relationships between anxiety and EWT’s.

Question 11

Evaluation: Yuille & Cutshall

Answer 11

Point: One limitation of this study is that the witnesses who experienced the highest levels of stress were closer to the event, and this may have helped with the accuracy of their memory recall.
- As a result, it makes us question whether their correct recall was due to anxiety, or whether is was caused by their proximity to the shooting.
- In conclusion, the internal validity of the research will decrease, as we cannot be certain what is impacting the ppts ability to recall.

Question 12

EWT evaluation points: summary

Answer 12

1. Field studies lack control- post event discussions occurring= may distort recall, as a result the extraneous variables may be responsible for the accuracy of recall.
2. Ethical issues- creating anxiety can subject people to psychological harm purely for research purposes.
   - Questions the need for such research.