Eye-witness Testimony - Effects Of Anxiety

Question 1

What is anxiety?

Answer 1

Anxiety is an unpleasant emotional state where we fear something about to happen. Tends to be accompanied with physiological arousal. Much of research in EWT is now focused on the effects of arousal.

Question 2

What is the weapon-focus effect?

Answer 2

This is where in violent crimes, arousal may focus the witness on more central details of the attack such as the weapon than the more peripheral details such as what the perpetrator looks like.

Question 3

Johnson & Scott - tunnel memory

Answer 3

• Found that ppts were worse at identifying someone holding a knife (33%) than someone holding a pen (49%).
• Due to weapon-focus effect, our attention is focused on the weapon as it is threatening. Don’t take in any peripheral information.

Question 4

Christianson & Hubinette (1993)

Answer 4

Questioned real victims of a bank robbery.
Found that those who had actually been threatened were more accurate in their recall, compared to those who were onlookers. Continued to be true 15 months later.

Question 5

Why is there contrasting findings on how anxiety affects accuracy in recall?

Answer 5

Dieffenbachia explains differences using the Yerkes-Dodson Law. An optimal level of anxiety is needed for accurate recall - too little or too much reduces the accuracy of EWT.

Question 6

EWT - anxiety - limitations

Answer 6

P - Weapons focus is not caused by anxiety
E - Pickel experiment, decreased accuracy is due to surprise. Arranged participants to watch a thief enter a hairdressing salon carrying scissors, handgun, wallet, or a raw chicken. Identification was least accurate in the high surprise conditions.

P - There is no simple conclusion
E - Halford & Milne (2005) found victims of violent crimes were more accurate in their recall of crime scene information than victims of non-violent crimes
E - more factors such as the specifics of the crime witnessed, and there could be many factors which affect EWT.

P - Individual differences
E - Bothwell, emotional sensitivity/personality type affects accuracy of recall. Stable participants showed rising levels of accuracy as stress levels increased, whereas the opposite was true for neurotics.
E - extraneous variable, relationship is complex. Anxiety affects witnesses differently dependent on personality type.

Question 7

Strengths - EWT: Anxiety

Answer 7

S = Research support both real life and lab studies
E - Deffenbacker et al, found lab research suggests anxiety reduces the anxiety of EWT. Furthermore, overall real-life research also supports this finding.
E - increase of accuracy - studies such as Hubinette may be exceptions.