Factors affecting EWT: Anxiety Flashcards
What is anxiety?
A state of emotional & physical arousal; emotions include worries thoughts and physical changes include increased heart rate and sweatiness
How can anxiety have a negative effect on recall?
It creates physiological arousal in the body which prevents us from paying attention to important cues
What was the procedure of Johnston & Scott’s (1976) study into the effect of weapons on accuracy of recall?
- pps thought they were taking part in a lab study so were seated in a waiting room & heard an argument in the next room
- in ‘low-anxiety’ condition a man with a pen & grease on his hands walked in
- in high-anxiety’ condition another group of pps heard the same argument but also the sound of breaking glass - a man holding a paper knife with blood on it then walked in
What were the findings of Johnston & Scott’s (1976) study into the effect of weapons on accuracy of recall?
- pps were asked to recall the man from 50 photos
- 49% who saw the man with the pen were able to identify him
- 33% of the pps who had seen the man with the bloody knife were able to recognise him
- supports the tunnel theory of memory
What is the tunnel theory of memory?
- It suggests that a witness’s attention narrows to focus on the weapon and not other aspects due to anxiety
- high levels of anxiety associated with low levels of accuracy of EWT
How can anxiety have a positive effect on recall?
The stress of witnessing an accident/crime triggers the fight or flight response which increases alertness & improves memory because we are more aware of the cues in the situation
What was the procedure of Yuille & Cutshall’s (1986) study showing that anxiety can have a positive effect on recall?
- study was conduced on a real-life event of a shooting in a gun shop in Vancouver
- 13/21 of the witnesses agreed to take part in the study
- interviews were held 4-5 months after the incident and compared to the original police interviews
- witnesses also asked to rate how stressed they felt at the time using a scale of 7
- accuracy determined by no. of details reported
What were the findings of Yuille & Cutshall’s (1986) study showing that anxiety can have a positive effect on recall?
- witnesses very accurately recalled the incident & there were little changes to accuracy after 5 months
- pps who had reported highest levels of stress recalled the most accurately at 88% compared to 75% of less stressed witnesses
What were the contradictory findings of Yerkes & Dodson (1908)
- they argued that the relationship between emotional arousal & performance looked like an inverted U
- lower levels of anxiety produce lower levels of accuracy
- memory improves as anxiety increases until optimum level of anxiety producing max. accuracy
- if more anxiety than optimum is experienced accuracy of recall will decrease
Evaluation: Weapon focus effect may not be relevant
- Johnson & Scott’s study on weapon focus effect may have just surprised pps rather than cause anxiety
- pps may have focused on the weapon as they were more surprised than scared
- Pickel conducted experiment using scissors, wallet, pistol & raw chicken as hand-held items - EW accuracy was poorer in unusual conditions like the chicken
- this suggests that weapon focus effect is due to unusualness rather than anxiety which doesn’t tell us much about the effect of anxiety on EWT
Evaluation: Field studies sometimes lack control
- researchers usually interview real-life eyewitnesses after an event
- there could’ve been post-event discussion & media coverage before the pps is interviewed - researchers don’t have control over these variables
- this is a limitation for field studies since extraneous variables could be responsible for accuracy of recall
- effects of anxiety is overshadowed by other factors
Evaluation: Ethical issues
- it can be seen as unethical to make pps subject to psychological harm for the sole purpose of research
- this is why real-life situations are useful for researchers - they interview people who have already witnessed a real-life event
- a reason for Johnson & Scott’s study (which didn’t cause psychological harm) is to allow comparison with less controlled field studies
Evaluation: Demand characteristics operate in lab studies of anxiety
- most lab studies show pps a filmed staged clip of an incident
- pps are aware they are watching a film which isn’t real so can most likely work out the questions they may be asked about it
- this produced invalid data which doesn’t explain the effect of anxiety on EWT
