eyewitness testimony-anxiety

Question 1

anxiety

Answer 1

Anxiety has strong physical and emotional effects on people.
However, it remains unclear whether or not these effects are positive or negative.
There is research to support both.

Question 2

the negative impact-Johnson and Scott

Answer 2

Johnson & Scott (1976)
PTs heard and arguments in the next room, whilst seated in the waiting area.

All PPTs were in either a low or a high anxiety condition.-low-participants saw person walk out office with a pen dripping ink-high-participants saw person walk out office with knife dripping blood

Recall was worse in the high anxiety condition when asked to describe the person walking out.
49% vs. 33% Recall.

weapon focus effect

Question 3

the positive impact-Yuille and Cutshall

Answer 3

Yuille & Cutshall (1986)
PPTs were all witness to a shooting in a shop.
There were 2l witnesses.
13 agreed to take part - 4-5 months after the incident - compared to the original police report.
Participants were also asked to judge their stress
(7-point scale)
Recall accuracy and stress levels at the time of the event were recorded.
Recall was better when stress levels were high:
88% vs. 75%

Question 4

inverted U theory

Answer 4

The Yerkes-Dodson Law (1908) looks at the relationship between emotional arousal and performance.
Deffenbacher (1983) Applied this to EWT.
Lower levels of anxiety produce lower levels of recall accuracy, however levels of recall accuracy increase with anxiety - up to a certain point

Question 5

limitation-contradictory evidence

Answer 5

knife study is contradicted by Yuille and Cutshall- anxiety increases accuracy

Question 6

limitation-contradictory research

Answer 6

Research into the Weapon focus effect has shown that it may in fact not be as relevant as initially thought.

Pickel (1998) suggested that the reason people focus on the weapon may be because they are surprised at what they see, rather than because they are scared.

In a study Pickel used scissors, a handgun, a wallet or a raw chicken as hand-held items in a hair dressing salon video. Eye-Witness accuracy was significantly poorer in the high unusualness conditions (chicken and handgun).

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

Question 7

limitation-ethical issues

Answer 7

A final criticism of research into the impact of anxiety, is that numerous ethical guidelines are often broken.

For example in Johnson and Scotts study the participants were deceived about the nature of the experiment, as they thought they were being invited to have an interview and they were not protected from harm.

Johnson & Scott also exposed some of the participants to a man holding a bloodied knife, which could have caused extreme feelings of anxiety.

This is an issue, as these participants may have left the experiment feeling exceptionally stressed and anxious, especially if they, or someone they knew, had been involved in a knife crime.