Factors Affecting EWT - Anxiety

Question 1

What is anxiety?

Answer 1

Anxiety is an unpleasant state of emotional and physical arousal.
The emotions include having worried thoughts and feelings of tension.

Physical changes changes include increased heart rate and sweatiness.

Question 2

It is not clear from the research evidence whether anxiety makes eyewitnesses recall better or worse.

What are the two effects/theories that show anxiety has a NEGATIVE effect on recall?

Answer 2

The weapon focus effect
the tunnel theory of memory

Question 3

What is the weapon focus effect?

Answer 3

The weapon focus effect is where witnesses to violent crimes focus on the weapon used, rather than the culprit’s face, negatively affecting their ability to recall important details such as face recognition

Question 4

Negative effect - weapon effect

How does it explain the relationship between eyewitness testimony and anxiety?

Answer 4

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

Question 5

What study investigated into weapon focus effect?

Answer 5

Johnson and Scott

Question 6

Describe the study of research into the weapon focus effect

Answer 6

Johnson and Scott conducted a lab based experiment in which they led participants to believe they were taking part in a lab study.

They asked the participants to sit and wait in a waiting room. In a low anxiety condition, they overheard a discussion from the lab followed by a man walking through the waiting room carrying a pen with grease on his hands.
In the high anxiety condition, they overheard a heated discussion followed by a man carrying a paper knife covered in blood.

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

The result found that the mean accuracy was 49% in identifying the man in the low anxiety condition (pen), compared with 33% accuracy in the high anxiety condition (knife).

This research supports the weapon focus effect as the anxiety caused by seeing the knife narrowed the focus of attention to the weapon (the knife was a source of danger) and took attentions away from the face of the man.

Question 7

Negative effect:
What is the tunnel theory of memory?

Answer 7

In stressful situations, our attention narrows to focus on one aspect of a situation; it is as is we had tunnel vision.

Question 8

How does tunnel vision explain the relationship between eyewitness testimony and anxiety?

Answer 8

It explains weapon focus by stating that in a stressful situation our attention narrows onto the weapon as it is the source of our anxiety.
This results in less accurate EWT

Question 9

What response shows that anxiety has a positive effect on recall?

Answer 9

The fight or flight response

Question 10

What is the fight or flight response?

How does it explain relationship between eyewitness testimony and anxiety?

The fight-or-flight response is triggered which increases our alertness and improves our memory for the event because we become more aware of the cues in the situation.

Answer 10

There is an alternative argument that high anxiety creates more enduring memories. The stress of witnessing a crime creates anxiety through physiological arousal in the body.

Question 11

What study investigated the effect of the fight or flight response anxiety on recall?

Answer 11

Yuille and Cutshall

Question 12

Fight of flight
Describe Yuille and Cutshall’s study

Answer 12

They interviewed 13 witnesses to an actual violent crime, in which the shop owner shot a thief dead.

They were interviewed four months after the event and accounts were compared to the the original police interviews.

Witnesses were also asked to rate how stressed they felt at the time using a 7 point scale.

The result found that witnesses were very accurate in their accounts
Participants who reported highest levels of stress were most accurate.

This research finding suggests that anxiety actually enhances the accuracy of memory.
This evidence contradicts the findings of Johnson and Scott’s lab based experiment.

Question 13

What can account for the apparent inconsistency of anxiety on EWT

Answer 13

The Yerkes Dodson Law

Question 14

What conclusions can be drawn from the Yerkes - Dodson inverted- U graph?

Answer 14

The graph shows that when anxiety is too low or too high, memory is less accurate. Accuracy is at its best when anxiety levels are moderate.

Question 15

Evaulation of anxiety off EWT
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Answer 15

Strength of real life studies have higher extended validity ( Yuille and Cutshall)

Weapon focus may not be caused by anxiety

ethical issues

the inverted U explanation is too simplistic

Question 16

Evaluation of Anxiety on EWT

Weapon focus may not be caused by anxiety

Answer 16

A limitation of the study by Johnson and Scott on weapon focus is that it may test surprise rather than anxiety.

Pickel proposed that the reduced accuracy of identification may be because they are surprised at what they saw rather than because they are scared. To test this she arranged for participants to watch a thief enter a hairdressing salon, a wallet (low threat, low surprise) or a whole raw chicken (low threat, high surprise). Identification was least accurate in the high surprise conditions rather than the high threat.

This supports the view that weapon focus is related to surprise rather than anxiety and may mean that research into EWT may tell us little about the effect of anxiety on EWT.

Question 17

Evaluation of Anxiety on EWT

Strength of real life studies have higher extended validity

Answer 17

A strength of real life studies, such as Yuille and Cutshall’s, is that it was a study of anxiety in the context of a ‘real crime’ and as such have a higher degree of external validity than artificial lab based studies.

In Yuille and Cutshall’s study, participants had witnessed a real life crime. These ‘real’ events are more realistic than any lab as they are sudden, unexpected and have high levels of stress.

As witnessing violent crime has been shown to have high anxiety content it could be argued that field studies provide the only real way to test the effect of anxiety on EWT accurately.

Question 18

Evaluation of Anxiety on EWT
Ethical issues

Answer 18

Creating anxiety in participants is very risky. It is potentially risky because it may subject people to psychological harm purely for the purpose of research.

This is why real-life studies, such as Yuille and Cutshall’s are so beneficial as psychologists interview people who have already witnessed an event so there is no need to create a potentially stressful event.

In Johnson and Scott’s study participants could’ve been highly distressed at the sight of the man with the knife. This does not challenge the findings of their study but it does question the need for such research.

One reason we may need to conduct such controlled studies as Johnson and Scott’s is to compare findings with less controlled field studies such as Yuille and Cutshall’s as the benefits of the added control may outweigh the ethical issues.

Question 19

Evaluation of Anxiety on EWT

Why may the inverted U explanation be too simplistic?

Answer 19

Anxiety is very difficult to define and measure accurately. One reason for this is that it has many elements - cognitive, behavioural, emotional and physical. But the inverted-U explanation assumes only one of these is linked to poor performance - physiological (physical) arousal.

This is a limitation as it only focuses on the physical aspects of anxiety and ignores cognitive elements I.e. What we think about the stressful situation which can have a major impact on how we remember it.