M: Lesson 11: Anxiety and Eye witness testimony

Question 1

What is anxiety?

Answer 1

• A state of apprehension, uncertainty, and fear resulting from a threatening situation
• When anxiety is high, it can cause disruption to both physical and psychological functioning.

Question 2

How is anxiety linked to eyewitness testimony?

Answer 2

• Anxiety can prevent accurate and detailed recall of the crime
  
  • The presence of a weapon during a crime increases anxiety and therefore could impair witnesses’ memory.
  • People who witness violent crimes will often pay attention to the aspect of the situation posing the most threat because of the anxiety these weapons cause.
  • Weapon focus effect: when someone focusses on the weapon and can give detailed reports on it, but not on the criminal themselves

Question 3

Loftus anxiety 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 he arranged for participants to overhear a heated and hostile argument between two people. They also heard sounds of furniture being overturned and broken glass. The man emerged carrying a letter opener covered in blood.
• In the control condition, participants overheard a conversation between two people about a lab 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 anxiety findings

Answer 4

• Only 33% of the participants in the experimental condition recognised the photo of the person carrying the letter opener. 49% of participants in the control condition recognised the person carrying the pen.
• Loftus 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

Positives of Loftus’ anxiety experiment

Answer 5

This study is supported by Loftus and Burns (1982) other research. They had two groups. 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

Negatives of Loftus’ anxiety experiment

Answer 6

• Lacks ecological validity. Although they were waiting in the reception area outside the lab, they may have anticipated that something was going to happen, which could have affected the validity of the study.
• This study violated numerous ethical guidelines. The participants were deceived and not protected from psychological harm. The participants were exposed to a man who they were lead 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.
• Yuille and Cutshall (1986) investigated the effect of anxiety in real life shooting, in which one person was killed and another person seriously wounded. 13/21 people agreed to take part in a follow up interview five months later. The witnesses were accurate in their eyewitness accounts 5 months later and little change as 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 lab.
• There are individual differences in how anxiety affects memory. Some people actually have better recall when they are anxious. Cristianson and Hubinette (1983) conducted a research study using 110 real life eyewitnesses who had witnessed 1 of 22 bank robberies. Someone were onlookers and some were bank clerks who had been directly threatened by the robber. It was found that victims were more accurate than onlookers in their description of the bank robbers.

Question 6

Negatives of Loftus’ anxiety experiment

Answer 6

• Lacks ecological validity. Although they were waiting in the reception area outside the lab, they may have anticipated that something was going to happen, which could have affected the validity of the study.
• This study violated numerous ethical guidelines. The participants were deceived and not protected from psychological harm. The participants were exposed to a man who they were lead 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.
• Yuille and Cutshall (1986) investigated the effect of anxiety in real life shooting, in which one person was killed and another person seriously wounded. 13/21 people agreed to take part in a follow up interview five months later. The witnesses were accurate in their eyewitness accounts 5 months later and little change as 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 lab.
• There are individual differences in how anxiety affects memory. Some people actually have better recall when they are anxious. Cristianson and Hubinette (1983) conducted a research study using 110 real life eyewitnesses who had witnessed 1 of 22 bank robberies. Someone were onlookers and some were bank clerks who had been directly threatened by the robber. It was found that victims were more accurate than onlookers in their description of the bank robbers.