Lesson 11 Anxiety and Eyewitness Testimony

Question 1

Anxiety

Answer 1

Anxiety is a state of apprehension, uncertainty, and fear resulting from a threatening situation.

When anxiety is high it can often impair both physical and psychological functioning.

Question 2

Weapon focus effect

Answer 2

Several psychologists have suggested that the anxiety that occurs when witnessing a crime can prevent accurate and detailed recall of that crime. The presence of a weapon during a crime increases anxiety and therefore could impair witnesses’ memory of the crime. People who observe a violent crime will often pay attention to the aspect of the situation posing the most threat to them because of the anxiety these weapons cause. This means that witnesses who see a violent crime involving a weapon can often describe a criminal’s weapon in great detail, but they cannot recall much about the criminal themselves. This is called the weapon focus effect

Question 3

Loftus (1979) procedure

Answer 3

Loftus (1979) wanted to see whether anxiety affected a person’s ability to recognise the perpetrator of a crime. In the experimental condition Loftus arranged for participants to overhear a heated and hostile argument between two people. They also heard the sounds of furniture being overturned and broken glass. Then a man emerged carrying a letter opener covered in blood. In the control condition participants overheard a conversation between two people about laboratory equipment failure before a man with grease all over his hands emerged carrying a pen. Participants were then asked to identify the person they had just seen from 50 photos.

Question 4

Loftus (1979) findings

Answer 4

Only 33% of the participants in the bloody letter opener condition recognised the photo of the person carrying the letter opener whereas 49% of the participants in the pen condition recognised the photo of the person carrying the pen. Loftus (1979) argued that this occurred because people in the former condition had focused on the bloody letter opener rather than the person carrying it, because the letter opener was a weapon that could pose a threat to them.

Question 5

Advantages of anxiety study (Loftus 1979)

Answer 5

1. This study is supported by other research studies. Loftus & Burns (1982) allocated participants into one of two conditions. One group watched a violent short film where a boy was shot in the head. The other group watched a non-violent short film of a crime. Participants were less accurate in recall when they saw the short film with a gun than those who watched the non-violent movie.

Question 6

Disadvantages of anxiety study (Loftus 1979)

Answer 6

• This study lacks ecological validity. Although they were waiting in the reception area outside of the laboratory, they may have anticipated that something was going to happen, which could have affected the accuracy of their judgements and the validity of the study.
• This study violated numerous ethical guidelines. The participants were deceived about the nature of the experiment and were not protected from psychological harm. The participants were exposed to a man who they were led to believe had just killed someone, holding a bloodied knife, which could have caused them extreme distress. Participants may have left the experiment feeling exceptionally stressed, especially if they, or someone they knew, had been involved in knife crime.
• 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. 21 witnesses were originally interviewed by investigating police and 13 of these witnesses, aged between 15 and 32, agreed to take part in Yuille and Cutshall’s follow-up interview five months later. The witnesses were accurate in their eyewitness accounts five months later and little change was found in their testimony. Furthermore, the witnesses avoided leading questions and those who had been most distressed at the time of the shooting gave the most accurate account. In real life cases leading questions and anxiety do not affect the accuracy of eyewitness testimony the same way they do in the laboratory
• There are individual differences in how anxiety affects memory. Some people actually have better recall when they are anxious. Christianson and Hubinette (1983) conducted a research study using 110 real life eyewitnesses who had witnessed one of 22 bank robberies. Some were onlookers and some were bank clerks who had been directly threatened by the robbers. It was found that victims were more accurate than onlookers in their description of the bank robbers.