Factors affecting the accuracy of eyewitness testimony - Anxiety Flashcards
What is anxiety?
State of emotional and physical arousal.
Prevents us paying attention to important cues.
Lower accuracy of EWT.
How does anxiety have a positive impact on recall?
Anxiety creates phsycial arousal.
Fight or flight response triggered - increasing altertness.
Improve memory - more aware of cues.
Describe the study by Yuille and Cutshall on EWT - Anxiety had positive effects on recall.
PPts were all witnesses to a shooting in a shop.
21 witness - 13 ageeded to take part.
Interviewed 4-5 months apart from original police interviews.
PPts asked to judge their stress level (on a 7 point scale)
Recall was better when stress levels were high.
88% vs 75%.
Describe the study by Johnson and Scott on EWT - Anxiety had negative effect on recall (weapon focus)
Johnson and Scott used the weapon focus effect to show anxiety in witness.
Reduces witnesses recall of other events.
Low-anxiety condition - Ppts in waiting room, casual conversation - man walks past - grease covered pen.
High anxiety conditioin - ppts in waiting room - loud argument - man walks past - blood covered knife.
Picked out man from 50 photos.
Low anxiety situation identification - 49% accurate
High anxiety - 33% accurate
Shows presence of weapon draws attention away from the man.
What are the evaluations of Anxiety?
Evidence supporting that anxiety has a negative effect on the accuracy of recall.
Unethical.
Study by Johnson and Scott may not have tested anxiety.
Evaluation: Evidence supporting that anxiety has a negative effect on the accuracy of recall.
Strength: Evidence supporting that anxiety has a negative effect on the accuracy of recall.
Study by Valentine and Mesout supports research on weapon focus.
Heart rate was used to divide ppts into high/low anxiety groups.
High anxiety clearly disrupted recall about actor in the London DUNGEONS’s Labyrinth.
Means high levels of anxiety has negative effect on EWT.
Evaluation: Study by Johnson and Scott may not have tested anxiety.
Evaluation: Study by Johnson and Scott may not have tested anxiety.
Pickel sugguested people focus on weapon because they are surprised rather than scared.
In a study Pickel used scissors, a handgun, a wallet or a raw chicken as the hand-items in a hairdressing salon video .
Eyewitness accuracy was significantly poorer in the high unusualness conditions (chicken and handgun).
This sugguests 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 EWT.
Evaluation: Unethical
Limitation: Unethical.
Johnson and Scotts study - ppts were decieved about nature of experiement.
Thought they were being invited to intervew.
Not protected from harm.
Johnson and Scott exposed ppts to man holding bloodied knife.
Cause anxiety.
Issue as ppts may have left experiment feeling stressed, especially if it may have unlocked an old traumatic memory.
