factors affecting eyewitness testimony: anxiety

Question 1

anxiety

Answer 1

• state of emotional and physical arousal
• having worried thoughts and feelings of tension
• physical changes include increased heart rate & sweatiness

Question 2

Research shows anxiety has a negative effect on recall : Johnson & Scott (1976) - procedure

Answer 2

• made ppts think they were in a lab study
• when they were in a waiting room , they had heard an argument in the next room
• 1 condition (low anxiety) = man walked out with a pen & grease on his hands
• 2 (high anxiety) = heard glass breaking and saw man with a bloody paper knife walk out

Question 3

Research shows anxiety has a negative effect on recall : Johnson & Scott (1976) - findings

Answer 3

• ppts had to pick him out of 50 photos
• condition 1 - 49% correctly identified him
• condition 2 = 33% correctly identified him

Question 4

Research shows anxiety has a positive effect on recall : Yuille & Cutshall (1986) - procedure

Answer 4

• study of real gun shooting in Canada
• there were 21 witnesses and 13 agreed to take part in the study
• interviews were 4-5 month post the incident & were compared to original police interviews
• witnesses also asked to rate how stress they felt (7 point scale) & asked if they had emotional problems post the event

Question 5

Research shows anxiety has a positive effect on recall : Yuille & Cutshall (1986) - findings

Answer 5

• witnesses gave very accurate accounts & little difference over 5 months
• those with reported high levels of stress were most accurate ( 88% compared to 75%)

Question 6

Why does anxiety reduce recall?

Answer 6

when a weapon is present the anxiety of seeing the weapon focuses all of your attention on the weapon and prevents us noticing important information ( tunnel theory of memory )

Question 7

why does anxiety improve recall?

Answer 7

• research suggest we remember more when anxious due to the flight or fight response
• increases alertness and improves memory

Question 8

Yerkes-Dodson Law

Answer 8

• too little anxiety = poor recall
• too much anxiety = poor recall
• just enough anxiety = perfect recall

Question 9

evaluation of factors affecting EWT: unusualness not anxiety

Answer 9

-Johnson & Scott may have not tested anxiety (ppts focused on the weapon due to surprise not anxiety)
- Pickel (1998) = experiment using scissors , handgun , wallet , raw chicken as items being held in a hairdressers
- scissors = high anxiety , low unusualness
- raw chicken = low anxiety high unusualness
- handgun = high anxiety high unusualness

• ppts were shown the video & found that the EWT was poorer in high unusualness conditions
• suggests that the weapon focus may be due to unusualness and not anxiety

Question 10

evaluation of factors affecting EWT: support for negative effect

Answer 10

• Valentine & Mesout (2009) = carried out a study at the Horror Labyrinth at the London Dungeon.
  
  • visitors were offered a reduced entrance fee if they agreed to complete a questionnaire about their anxiety level, at the end.
• They wore heart monitors and were divided into two groups (high and low anxiety)
• They then had to describe one of the people in the labyrinth.
• High anxiety – made more mistakes in their descriptions – only 17% correctly identified the actor
  Low anxiety – 75% correctly identified the actor.
• the higher the anxiety, the worse the EWT.

Question 11

evaluation of factors affecting EWT: support for positive effect

Answer 11

• Christianson & Hubinette (1993) = interviewed 58 witnesses to a real bank robbery in Sweden.
  
  • High anxiety group = those directly involved
    Low anxiety group = those indirectly involved
  • Recall was 75% accurate across all witnesses – high anxiety group were even more accurate.
• This suggests that in real life crimes, anxiety can actually improve EWT.

Question 12

evaluation of factors affecting EWT: problems with Christianson & Hubinette’s research

Answer 12

• ppts were interviewed several months after the event
  -researchers had no control over what happened in this time(post-event discussion)
• may be that a lack of control over the confounding variables invalidates the support this study provides.

Question 13

evaluation of factors affecting EWT: problems with inverted - U theory

Answer 13

• ignores that anxiety has many elements (cognitive, emotional, behavioural and physical)
• only focuses on the physical element and assumes this is the only aspect linked to EWT. - However, the way we think about the situation (cognitive) may also be important.