Memory: Anxiety Flashcards
What Is Anxiety?
- A state of emotional (e.g worried thoughts) and physical arousal (e.g increased heart rate).
- Anxiety is a normal reaction to stressful situations but can affect the accuracy of details of eye witness testimony.
- Arousal may focus the witness on more central details of the attack (e.g weapon) than more peripheral details (e.g what else is happening).
Describe: Johnson And Scott - Lowering Accuracy - Weapon Effect.
Aim: Look into the effect of weapons in accuracy of recall of the witness.
Procedure: Johnson and Scott led participants to believe they were going to take part in a lab study. While in the waiting room they heard an argument in the next room. Low anxiety condition a man walked passed carrying a pen with grease on his hand. Whereas other participants heard the same heated argument but this time there was a sound of breaking glass. A man walked passed holding a paper knife that was covered in blood (high anxiety).
Findings: Participants later picked out the man from 50 photos. 49% of the participants who witnessed the low anxiety were able to identify the man. Whereas 33% who witnessed the high anxiety were able to identify the man. The tunnel theory of memory argues that a witness’s attention narrows to focus on a weapon due to anxiety.
Conclusion: Weapon focus effect causes a reduction in the accuracy of eyewitness testimony.
Describe: Yuille And Cutshall - Increase Accuracy - Fight Or Flight Response Alertness.
Aim: Wanted to see the effects of a fight and flight on alertness and memory (more aware of cues in the situation).
Procedure: Yuille and Cutshall conducted a study of a real life shooting in a gun shop. The shop owner shot a thief dead. 13 witnesses agreed to take part in the study. Interviews were held 4-5 months after the incident and were compared to the original police interviews. The witness were also asked to rate how stressed they had felt during the incident using a 7 point scale, and were asked if they had any emotional problems since the event.
Findings: Witnesses were accurate with accounts as there was little change in the amount of accuracy after 5 months. Those participants who reported the highest levels were most accurate ( 88% compared to 75% for the less stressed group).
Conclusion: Anxiety can improve the accuracy of EWT.
Weakness: Weapon Focus Effect May Not Be Relevant.
- The focus on weapon effect may not be as important.
- In the study by Johnson and Scotte the weapon focus may test surprise rather than anxiety.
- The participants may have been focusing on the weapon due to the surprising situation rather than being scared.
- For example Pickel (1988) conducted an experiment using scissors, hand-gun, a wallet or a raw chicken as the handheld items in a hairdressing salon video (scissors low anxiety).
- The 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 that anxiety/threat and therefore tell us nothing specifically about the effects of anxiety on EWT.
- This means that the knowledge gained from studies about the effects of anxiety on EWT are limited.
Weakness: Ethical Issues.
- There are ethical issues within the area of the research.
- Creating anxiety in participants is very risky as it may subject people to psychological harm purely for the purpose of research.
- However it could be argued that the potential benefits of the research outweighs the ethical issues, causing some research where anxiety created to be seen as appropriate.
- This may cause the validity of anxiety and the impact to EWT to increase, as the researcher can measure it, but may cause ethical issues to be questioned.
Weakness: The Inverted-U Explanation Is Too Simplistic.
- The inverted-U explanation is too simplistic, as anxiety is very difficult to define and measure accurately.
- One reason for this is that it has many elements such as cognitive, behavioural, emotional and physical.
- But the inverted-U explanation assumes only one of these are linked to poor EWT.
- This therefore lowers the validity of the explanation for factors affecting memory.
Weakness: Field Studies Sometimes Lack Control.
- Researchers usually interview real life eyewitnesses sometime after the study.
- However, the researcher has no control over what happens during this time, such as discussions with other people about the event, or what they have read or seen on the media, also known as post-event discussions.
- This is a limitation of field research because it is possible that these extraneous variables may be responsible of the accuracy of recall.
Weakness: Demand Characteristics Operate In Lab Studies Of Anxiety.
- Most lab studies show participant a filmed crime.
- Most of these participants will be aware they are watching a filmed crime for a reason to do with the study.
- This would mean they would workout themselves that they are going to be asked about what they have seen.
- This is known as demand characteristics, which is when participants try to guess the aim, and therefore may alter their behaviour.
- This would reduce the internal validity as participants behaviour isn’t natural.
Strength: Real World Application
- There are real world application of the research on anxiety.
- Understanding the effect of anxiety on the accuracy of EWT could help to determine the credibility of a witness.
- We now know that there is an optimal level of anxiety which will produce maximum accuracy.
- The findings of research in this area are useful for those responsible for questioning witnesses.
