LS8 - EWT Accuracy - Anxietyh Flashcards
Yerkes & Dodson Law
The relationship between emotional arousal and performance looks like an n, it states performance increases with stress, but only to a certain. This can be applied to witness accuracy,
Example Of High Anxiety
Weapon Focus Effect
Weapon Focus Effect
High aniety can be caused by a weapon, and therefore a witness’s focus might switch from the crime to the weapon.
Weapon Focus Study Method
Johnson & Scott - Participants sat outside a lab and either heard a friendly conversation and a man leaving with greasy hands and a pen or an arguement, smashing glass, overturned furtniture and a man leaving with a bloody paper knife. Paritipcnats were then asled to identify the man from 50 photos.
Weapon Focus Effect Results
Johnson & Scott - Paritipcants were 49% accurate with the pen & 33% accurate with the paperknife, suggesting anxiety can lead people to focus on the weapon.
Weapon Effect Study Conclusion
Anxiety created from the weapon affect, diverts attnetion away from the man, reducing accuracy.
Natural Anxiety Study Method
Christianson & Hubinette - Question 58 real witnesses to a bank robbery 4-15 months afterwards, generally recall was more accurate, the more anxious pariticpants had higher recall.
Natural Anxiety Study Conclusion
Memory for negative events is better than memory recall for positive ones.
Weaknesses
Weapon Focus Effect May Not Link To Anxiety
Field studies lack control
Ethical Issues
Yerkes Dodson Is Too Simplistic
Weapon focus effct may not link to anxiety (-)
The reduced accuracy could be due to surprise over anxiety. Studies showed recall was also low in surprise conditions where a thief was holding a chicken.
Field studies lack control (-)
Christianson’s study was naturalistic meaning it had high ecological validity and was likely to replicate recall in a real life setting. However, it becomes difficult to control confounding variables e.g. people who had higher anxiety were likely to be nearest to the incident and that’s why recall was high.
Ethical Issues (-)
INducing anxiety onto pariticpants might amke them have psychological harm e.g. being outside the room in Johnson and Scott’s study may result in increased stress.
Yerkes Dodson Too Simplistic (-)
Anxiety is difficult to measure as it has many elemnts and the Yerkes Dodson law lnikts it to psychological arousal, which anxiety isn’t always shown in.
Individual Differences (-)
Participant’s personality could be affecting their recall as opposed to anxiety.
