Factors Affecting Eyewitness Testimony - Anxiety Flashcards
What is Anxiety
A state of emotional and physical arousal
Emotions include worried thoughts and feelings of tension
Physical changes include an increased heart rate and sweatiness
Is a normal reaction to stressful situations but can affect the accuracy and detail of eyewitness testimonies
How Does Anxiety Negatively Affect Recall
Creates a physiological arousal in the body that prevents us from paying attention to important cues, causing recall to be worse
The presence of a weapon creates anxiety and leads to a focus on the weapon and lack of focus on other details of the event
Johnson and Scott (1976) - Weapons and Anxiety
Participants believed they were taking part in a lab study
While seated in the waiting room, the low-anxiety condition heard a casual conversation in the next room and then saw a man walk past them carrying a pen with grease on his hands
Other participants (high-anxiety condition) overheard a heated argument, accompanied by the sound of breaking glass. A man then walked out the room holding a knife covered in blood
Findings-
Participants later picked out the man from a set of 50 photos
Low-Anxiety Condition - 49% correctly identified the man with the pen
High-Anxiety Condition - 33% correctly identified the man with the knife
The Tunnel Theory of memory argues that people have enhanced memory for central events. Weapon focus, as a result of anxiety, can have this effect
How Does Anxiety Positively Affect Recall
Witnessing a stressful event creates anxiety through physiological arousal within the body
The Fight Or Flight response is triggered, increasing alertness
This may improve memory for the event as we become more aware of cues in the situation
Yuille and Cutshall (1986) - Stress and Recall
Conducted a study of an actual shooting in a gun shop in Vancouver, Canada
The shop owner shot a thief dead
There were 21 witnesses, 13 took part in the study
Participants were interviewed 4-5 months after the incident and these interviews were compared with the original police interviews from the time of the shooting
Accuracy was determined by the number of details reported in each account
Witnesses were also asked to rate how stressed they were at the time of the incident (on a 7-point scale) and whether they had any emotional problems since the event
Findings-
Witnesses were very accurate in their accounts and there was little change in the amount recalled or accuracy (though some details such as age/height/weight estimates were less accurate)
Those participants who reported high levels of stress were most accurate (about 88% compared to 75% for the less stressed group)
Suggests anxiety does not have a detrimental effect on the accuracy of eyewitness memory in a real-world context and may even enhance it
Yerkes and Dodson (1908) and Deffenbacher (1983) - Explaining the Contradictory Findings
Yerkes and Dodson -
States that the relationship between emotional arousal and performance looks like an “inverted U”
Deffenbacher -
Reviewed 21 studies of EWT and noted contradictory findings on the effects of anxiety
Used Yerkes-Dodson Law to explain the findings
Lower levels of anxiety/arousal produce lower levels of recall accuracy
Memory becomes more accurate as the levels of anxiety/arousal increases
However, there is an optimal level of anxiety, which is the point of maximum accuracy. If a person experiences any more arousal, then their recall suffers a drastic decline
Evaluation (WEAKNESS) - Unusualness not Anxiety
Johnson and Scott may not have tested anxiety
The reason participants focused on the weapon may be because they were surprised at what they saw rather than scared
Kerri Pickel (1998) -
Conducted an experiment using scissors, a handgun, a wallet or a raw chicken as the hand-held items in a hairdressing salon video
Scissors would be high-anxiety and low unusualness
Eyewitness accuracy was significantly poorer in the high unusualness conditions (chicken and handgun)
Suggests that the weapon focus effect is due to unusualness rather than anxiety/threat and therefore tells us nothing specifically about the effects of anxiety on eyewitness testimonies
Evaluation (STRENGTH) - Support for Negative Effects
Evidence supporting the view that anxiety has a negative effect on the accuracy of recall
Valentine and Mesout (2009) -
Supports the research on weapon focus, finding negative effects on recall
Anxiety clearly disrupted the participant’s ability to recall details about the actor in the London Dungeon Labyrinth
Suggests that a high level of anxiety does have a negative effect on the immediate eyewitness recall of a stressful event
Valentine and Mesout (2009) - Labyrinth of Horror
Conducted a study in the real-world setting of the Horror Labyrinth at the London Dungeon
Designed to be frightening with darkness, screams, gory models and sudden movements
Participants wore heart monitors to confirm they were experiencing anxiety
2 groups: High Anxiety and Low Anxiety
Found that 17% of the High-Anxiety group correctly identified the actor in a line-up compared to 75% in the Low-Anxiety group
Evaluation (STRENGTH) - Support for Positive Effects
Evidence supporting that anxiety can have a positive effect on the accuracy of recall
Christianson and Hubinette -
Interviewed 58 witnesses to actual bank robberies in Sweden
Some witnesses were directly involved (e.g. bank workers) and some were indirectly involved (e.g. bystanders)
Researchers assumed that those directly involved would experience the most anxiety
Found that recall was more than 75% accurate across all witnesses
The direct victims were even more accurate
Confirms that anxiety does not reduce the accuracy of recall for eyewitnesses and may even enhance it
Evaluation - Support for Positive Effects (COUNTERPOINT)
Christianson and Hubinette -
Interviewed their participants several months after the event (4-15 months)
Researchers therefore had no control over what happened to their participants in the intervening time (e.g. post-event discussions)
Effects of anxiety may have been overwhelmed by these other factors and impossible to test by the time the participants were interviewed
It is possible that a lack of control over confounding variables may be responsible for these findings, invalidating their support
Evaluation (WEAKNESS) - Problems with Inverted-U Theory
Appears to be a reasonable explanation of the contradictory findings linking anxiety with both increased and decreased eyewitness recall
However it ignores the fact that anxiety has many elements - cognitive, behavioural, emotional and physical
Focuses on just physical arousal and assumes this is the only aspect linked to EWT
The way we think about the stressful situation may also be important
