Factors affecting the accuracy of eyewitness testimony: Anxiety Flashcards
How can anxiety negatively affect eyewitness recall?
It creates physiological arousal that distracts from important cues, leading to poorer memory accuracy—especially due to weapon focus.
What is the weapon focus effect?
When anxiety caused by a weapon leads a witness to focus on the weapon rather than other details, reducing overall recall accuracy.
What was the procedure of Johnson and Scott’s (1976) study?
Participants waited in a room and witnessed either a man with a pen (low-anxiety) or a man with a bloody knife after hearing a violent incident (high-anxiety).
What were the findings of Johnson and Scott’s study?
49% correctly identified the man in the low-anxiety (pen) condition, but only 33% in the high-anxiety (knife) condition.
What is the tunnel theory of memory?
A theory suggesting that people focus attention on central details (like a weapon) under stress, leading to reduced recall for peripheral details.
How can anxiety positively affect recall?
The fight-or-flight response increases alertness, possibly improving the accuracy of memory for stressful events.
What was the procedure in Yuille and Cutshall’s (1986) real-life EWT study?
13 witnesses to a real shooting were interviewed 4–5 months after the event. Their recall was compared to their original police interviews.
What did Yuille and Cutshall find?
Witnesses were highly accurate even after 5 months. Those who reported higher stress had better recall (88%) than those with lower stress (75%).
What does the Yerkes-Dodson Law suggest about anxiety and performance?
Performance increases with arousal up to an optimal point, then decreases if arousal becomes too high (inverted U-shaped curve).
How did Deffenbacher (1983) apply the Yerkes-Dodson Law to EWT?
He proposed that moderate anxiety improves memory accuracy, but too much or too little anxiety reduces it.
Limitation of ANXIETY
One limitation of the study by Johnson and Scott is that it 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 (where scissors would be high anxiety, low unusualness). Eyewitness accuracy was significantly poorer in the high unusualness conditions (chicken and handgun).
This 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 EWT.
strength (1) of ANXIETY
One strength is evidence supporting the view that anxiety has a negative effect on the accuracy of recall.
The study by Tim Valentine and Jan Mesout (2009, see right) supports the research on weapon focus, finding negative effects on recall. The researchers used an objective measure (heart rate) to divide participants into high- and low-anxiety groups. In this study anxiety clearly disrupted the participants’ ability to recall details about the actor in the London Dungeon’s Labyrinth.
This suggests that a high level of anxiety does have a negative effect on the immediate eyewitness recall of a stressful event.
strength (2) ANXIETY
Another strength is evidence showing that anxiety can have positive effects on the accuracy of recall.
Sven-Ake Christianson and Birgitta Hübinette (1993) interviewed 58 witnesses to actual bank robberies in Sweden. Some of the witnesses were directly involved (e.g. bank workers) and some were indirectly involved (e.g. bystanders). The researchers assumed that those directly involved would experience the most anxiety. It was found that recall was more than 75% accurate across all witnesses. The direct victims (most anxious were even more accurate.
These findings from actual crimes confirm that anxiety does not reduce the accuracy of recall for eyewitnesses and may even enhance it.
