Eyewitness Testimony: Anxiety Flashcards
Describe Johnson and Scott’s study on the effect of anxiety on EWT
-To examine how the presence of a weapon (which can create anxiety) affects the accuracy of eyewitness memory.
Method:
-Participants were led to believe they were taking part in a lab experiment and were seated in a waiting area. They were exposed to one of two conditions:
-Low-anxiety condition: Participants overheard a casual conversation, and a man then walked out of the room holding a pen with grease on his hands.
-High-anxiety condition: Participants overheard a heated argument followed by the sound of breaking glass and crashing furniture. A man then walked out holding a bloody knife.
-Afterward, participants were shown 50 photos and asked to identify the man they had seen.
Findings:
-Low-anxiety condition: 49% correctly identified the man.
-High-anxiety condition: Only 33% correctly identified the man.
Findings of Johnson and Scotts study on the effect of anxiety on EWT
-Low-anxiety condition: 49% correctly identified the man.
-High-anxiety condition: Only 33% correctly identified the man
Conclusion if Johnson and Scotts study
-The presence of a weapon can cause weapon focus, where witnesses concentrated on the weapon rather than the perpetrator’s face, suggesting that high anxiety can impair the accuracy of eyewitness identification, likely due to heightened stress narrowing their attention.
Describe Yuille and Cutshall (1986) study on the effect of anxiety on EWT
Aim: To examine the accuracy and reliability of eyewitness testimony following a real-life crime and to assess whether anxiety levels impact recall.
Method:
-The study was based on a real shooting that took place in Vancouver, Canada, where a gun store owner shot and killed a thief. 21 witnesses were originally interviewed by police, and 13 agreed to take part in a follow-up research study 4–5 months later. Researchers compared the witnesses’ original police statements with their later accounts and measured accuracy by the number of details recalled. Furthermore, witnesses were also asked to rate their stress levels at the time of the incident.
Findings:
-Witnesses were highly accurate, even after 5 months, with little change in their recall of key details. Participants who reported higher levels of stress were actually more accurate (88% accuracy) compared to those with lower stress levels (75% accuracy).
This demonstrates that anxiety may actually enhance EWT rather than reduce it
Who proposed the inverted U theory
Yerkes and Dodson (1908)
What is meant by the inverted U theory
-Yerkes and Dodson argue that the relationships between performance and arousal/stress is an inverted U, suggesting that moderate arousal leads to optimal performance while too much or too little impairs it.
(Explains why moderate anxiety enhances recall but high worsens it)
What may explain the contradictory findings of the effect of anxiety on EWT (some say it has positive affect some say negative)
-The inverted U theory
Deffenbacher (1983) study on affects of anxiety on EWT
-Conducted a meta-analysis of 21 studies examining the effect of heightened anxiety on eyewitness memory and they compared studies where participants experienced low vs. high levels of anxiety. The findings were very contradictory
Conclusion:
This demonstrates that moderate anxiety improves memory, but excessive anxiety impairs it, supporting the inverted U hypothesis of anxiety and performance.
Evaluation of effects of anxiety on EWT
-Evidence for negative effects
-Evidence for positive effects
-Anxiety may not be relevant to weapon focus
-Problems with the inverted U theory (extra)
Valentine and Mesout (2009) supporting evidence for negative effects
-Valentine and Mesout conducted a study at the London Dungeon, where visitors experienced a scary walk-through horror attraction. Participants wore heart rate monitors to measure their physiological anxiety levels and were later asked to describe and identify a costumed actor they encountered (who played a ‘scary person’). Participants were divided into high-anxiety and low-anxiety groups based on their reported stress levels.
Findings
-High-anxiety participants were less accurate at identifying the actor than low-anxiety participants. This suggests that high stress impairs the ability to recall details and recognize faces, supporting the weapon focus effect and Deffenbacher’s findings that high anxiety negatively impacts EWT.
Findings of Valentine and Mesouts study for supporting evidence of negative effects of anxiety
Findings
-High-anxiety participants were less accurate at identifying the actor than low-anxiety participants. This suggests that high stress impairs the ability to recall details and recognize faces, supporting the weapon focus effect and Deffenbacher’s findings that high anxiety negatively impacts EWT.
Christianson and Hubinette (1993) supporting evidence for positive effects of anxiety on EWT
-They interviewed actual witnesses to bank robberies. Some of these witnesses were direct victims, so would have experienced it anxiety, and others were bystanders, so would have experienced less anxiety.
-They found that more than 75% accurate recall across all witnesses. Direct victims who experienced the most anxiety were even more accurate in their recall. This supports the idea that actually anxiety enhances EWT.
Counterpoint of Christianson and Hubinette study on positive effects of anxiety on EWT
-Witnesses were interviewed a long time after the event and so the researchers would not have been able to control other factors that may have had affect on EWT, such as post event discussions etc. Therefore lack of control over these confounding variables may be responsible for the accuracy of recall and no anxiety.
Counterpoint of Valentine and Mesouts study
-Participants variables may have affected the findings and so may not be complete reliable.
Why may anxiety not be relevant to weapon focus
-Some critics suggest that Johnson and Scotts participants may have focused on the weapon not because they were anxious but because they were surprised
What evidence did Pickel (1998) find that suggests that anxiety may not be relevant to weapon focus
-Found accuracy in identifying the ‘criminal’ was poorest when the object in their hand was unexpected, for example, raw chicken and a gun in a hairdressers (both-unusual)
-This suggests the weapons effect is due to unusualness rather than anxiety/threat and so tells us nothing about the specific effects of anxiety on recall
Criticisms of the inverted U theory
-It only focuses on physical anxiety and ignores other elements, including cognitive, which focuses on how we think about a stressful event affects what we recall
-Therefore, the inverted-U theory is probably too simplistic to be useful, for example, anxious thoughts may not always lead to symptoms of anxiety but may block memory
