factors affecting the accuracy of EWT: anxiety

Question 1

AO1: what is anxiety

Answer 1

a state of emotional or physical arousal

Question 2

AO1: weapon focus effects of anxiety study 1

Answer 2

Johnson & Scott (1976)
participants were left in a waiting room. One group were the ‘no weapon group’ they heard a convo about equipment failure and then saw a man leaving holding a pen and with grease on his hands. The second group was the ‘weapon group’ they heard a heated argument and crashing chairs and then a man running holding a bloody knife. Both groups then shown 50 pictures and asked to identify the man. The ‘no weapon’ group identified the the man more than the ‘weapon’ group. The group exposed to the knife had higher anxiety so more likely to focus on the weapon than the man which reduces the accuracy of EWT.

Question 3

AO1: effects of anxiety study 2

Answer 3

Yuille and Cutshall (1986)
investigated the effect of anxiety in a real‐life shooting, in which one person was killed and another person seriously wounded. 13 witnesses aged 15 to 32 agreed to take part in their follow up research interview. They found that the 13 witnesses who took part were accurate in their eyewitness accounts five months later, and little change was found in their testimonies. the witnesses avoided responding in a biased way to leading
questions and the anxiety experienced at the time of the event had no effect on their memory.

Question 4

study 3: explaining the contradictory findings

Answer 4

a psychologist reviewed 21 studies and found that the stress-performance relationship following
an inverted-U function proposed by the Yerkes Dodson Curve (1908). This means that for tasks of moderate complexity (such as EWT), performances increases with stress
up to an optimal point where it starts to decline.

Question 5

AO3: limitation- research lacks ecological validity (johnson & scott)

strength- controlled

Answer 5

P: lacks ecological validity
E: when waiting in the reception outside the lab the participants can guess the aim which effects their judgement and creates demand characteristics
L: this suggests the studies results don’t represent real life cases of extreme anxiety
HOWEVER,
conditions and extraneous variables were controlled which means it can be repeated to check for consistency which means it is reliable

Question 6

AO3: limitation- ethical issues (johnson & scott)

strength-

Answer 6

P: ethical guidelines broken
E/E: participants were deceived about the nature of the experiment and not protected from harm as the bloody knife can leave them feeling stressed
L: why real life studies are beneficial
HOWEVER,
participants debriefed and all offered psychological support

Question 7

AO3: limitation- weapon focus effect research issue

Answer 7

P: weapon focus effect research issue
E: suggested it is testing surprise rather than anxiety.
E: study done where participants were shown video of hairdressing salon and the items scissors, handgun, wallet and raw chicken were shown. Found EW accuracy was poorer in the high unusualness conditions (raw chicken and handgun).
suggests weapon focus effect is due to unusualness rather than anxiety which tells us nothing specifically about the effects of EWT

Question 8

AO3: limitation- inverted U is too simplistic

Answer 8

P: inverted U too simplistic
E/E: because anxiety has so many elements (cognitive, behavioural, emotional and physical) so hard to measure. The inverted U assumes only physical arousal is linked to poor performance
L: cause & effect can’t be establised