factors affecting eyewitness testimony: anxiety

Question 1

what affect does anxiety have on recall?

Answer 1

-creates physiological arousal
-prevents people from paying attention
=worse recall

Question 2

explain the anxiety procedure? (weapon focus)

Answer 2

pp’s heard argument with 2 different outcomes

• LOW ANXIETY: man walked out room with pen and grease on hands
• HIGH ANXIETY- walked out of room with paper knife covered in blood

Question 3

explain the finding from the anxiety procedure? (weapon focus)

Answer 3

• pp’s picked man from 50 mug shots
• 49% who saw pen could identify
• 33% who saw blood could identify
• shows witness attention is on weapon

Question 4

what is a criticism of the weapon focus research?

Answer 4

• may be testing surprise rather than anxiety
• could have focused on weapon due to fear
• research conducted found that recall was worse with unusual objets eg. holding a chicken/
• weapon focus could be due to unusualness not threat

Question 5

explain the procedure of real life witness recall?

Answer 5

-real life shooting in Canada
shop owner shot and 13 witnesses
-interviews held 4/5 months later to go over shooting
-compared testimony from shooting and interview

Question 6

what were the findings from the study into real life witness recall?

Answer 6

• witness accurate in accounts
• small details like colour were incorrect
• those reported as most stressed= better recall
• situational cues paired with axiety= better recall

Question 7

explain contradictory findings?

Answer 7

YERKES-DODSON LAW

• UPSIDE DOWN U ON AXIS GRAPH
• lower levels of anxiety= low levels of performance
• performance increases as accuracy does
• until optimum level, then witness accuracy declines

Question 8

evaluate what is wrong with real life recall research?

Answer 8

WEAKNESS

• when researchers interview many things could have happened in that time
• may impact accuracy of recall
• also has effects on anxiety which effects recall

Question 9

evaluate ethical issues?

Answer 9

• creating anxiety is bad for pp’s -psychological harm
• real situations are more beneficial
• inaccurate to compare findings from staged and real life studies because different levels of control