Factors Affecting Eyewitness Testimony: Anxiety

Question 1

Outline Johnson and Scott’s study on anxiety.

Answer 1

Procedure: conducted a lab study in which there were two conditions. The high anxiety condition included pps overhearing an argument and the sound of glass smashing then seeing a man walk out of the room the argument was in with a bloody letter opener. The low anxiety condition included pps overhearing a casual conversation and seeing a man walk through the waiting room with greasy hands and a pen whilst saying “too bad the machine broke”.

Findings: ANXIETY HAS A NEGATIVE IMPACT ON RECALL.
when asked to identify the man, only 33 percent of pps in the high anxiety condition were able to correctly choose the man as opposed to 49 percent in the low anxiety condition.

Question 2

Outline Yullie and Cutshall’s study on anxiety.

Answer 2

Procedure: followed up 13 eyewitnesses after a real life shooting to test their recall. They had to rank their anxiety as ‘high’ or ‘low’.

Findings: ANXIETY HAS A POSITIVE IMPACT ON RECALL.
eyewitness accuracy was still high after this period - those who ranked their anxiety at the time of the event as ‘high’, recalled 11 percent more accurately than those with ‘low’ anxiety.

Question 3

What is a limitation of anxiety as a factor which affects eyewitness testimony?

Answer 3

1. Personality may explain why there are contradictory findings on how anxiety affects eyewitness testimony.

Bothwell et al found that those labelled as ‘neurotic’ had more accuracy in their recall when stressed compared to those not labelled as neurotic who had less accuracy in their recall when stressed. This suggests that research into how anxiety affects eyewitness testimony may have been impacted by confounding variables thus leading to the internal validity of these studies being threatened. Therefore, individual differences may affect the relationship between anxiety and accuracy of recall.

Question 4

What is a second limitation of anxiety as a factor which affects eyewitness testimony?

Answer 4

2. Research into how anxiety impacts the accuracy of eyewitness testimony has broken ethical guidelines.

For example, in Johnson and Scott’s study, particpants were deceived about the nature of the experiment and so were not protected from harm. Additionally, the researchers exposed the participants to a man holding a bloodied weapon. This may have caused extreme anxiety as well as psychological distress. This is an issue for the experiment as participants would have most likely left feeling anxious, worried and psychologically disturbed especially if they knew someone involved in knife crime. Therefore, these ethical issues must be justified.

Question 5

What is a third limitation of anxiety as a factor which affects eyewitness testimony?

Answer 5

3. The weapon focus effect may not be caused by anxiety.

Pickel proposed that the reduced accuracy of recall could come from surprise rather than anxiety. In her study, a thief came into the hairdressers carrying one of the 4: scissors, a gun, a wallet or a raw chicken. Scissors and a gun opposed a high threat to the participants whereas a wallet and raw chicken were low threat but high surprise. The researcher found that identification was least accurate in the high surprise conditions, the raw chicken and wallet condition, than the high threat conditions. Therefore, this supports the view that the weapon focus effects is caused by surprise.