Anxiety on accuracy of EWT

• Performance on complicated cognitive tasks is worsened by anxiety. People who are very anxious become less accurate when stressed,whereas stress increases accuracy in people who do not have anxiety.
• Loftus and Palmer provide evidence that anxiety has a negative effect on accuracy of EWT.

  Christianson and Hubinette found anxiety has a positive effect on the accuracy of EWT.
• Anxiety has a positive effect on accuracy

  Christianson and Hubinette (1993)

  found evidence of enhanced recall when they questioned 58 real witnesses to bank robberies.Witnesses were either victims or bystanders.Interviews were conducted 4-15 months later.

  findings: all witnesses showed generally good memories for details of the robbery (75% recall). Those who were most anxious(victims) had best recall. Study generally shows anxiety does not reduce accuracy of recall.
• Anxiety has a negative effect on accuracy

  Loftus and Palmer (1974)

  p's sit in a waiting room whilst an argument is going on in the next room. A man then ran through the room with a pen covered in grease(low anxiety) or a knife covered in blood(high anxiety). P's were then asked to identify the man.

  Findings

  Mean accuracy: 49% identified the pen condition

  33% identified the knife condition

  Loftus 1987- anxiety focus attention on central crime features (weapon)

  researchers monitored eye movement- drawn to weapon not face.
• However there is opposing research into the effects of anxiety on EWT. Christianson and Hubinette used real life witnesses of a bank robbery. Asked to identify robber 4-15 months later,75% correctly identified the robber despite being anxious. This suggests anxiety may actually have positive effects on EWT accuracy as this study is a real life investigation,with higher ecological validity than L+P. Therefore,this evidence reputes anxiety having a negative effect on EWT accuracy.
• Loftus and Palmer’s findings on weapon focus could be due to

  other factors. Pickel proposed that reduced accuracy could be due to

  surprise rather than the weapon focus effect, and found that

  identification was least accurate when a thief walked into the

  salon with a raw chicken (high surprise condition) than a pair

  of scissors (low surprise condition). This supports the view that weapon focus effect is related to surprise rather than anxiety. Therefore, anxiety may not have an as negative effect on EWT accuracy as originally proposed by Loftus and Palmer.
• However it is difficult to conclude the true effect of

  anxiety on EWT in real life. Christianson & Hubinette’s study was on violent crime, but doesn’t explain anxiety the accuracy of EWT in non-violent

  real life crimes. Halford and Milne found p's were more likely to recall the perpetrator of violent crimes than non-violent crimes,so the positive effect of anxiety is not the same for all crimes. Therefore anxiety may be considered to be an incomplete explanation of inaccuracy in EWT.
• Furthermore, extraneous variables such as emotional

  sensitivity can impact results. Bothwell et al. assessed participants for neuroticism (a personality characteristic whereby individuals become anxious

  quickly) or stability. They found that the stable participants showed rising levels of accuracy as stress levels increased, whereas accuracy

  decreased as stress increased in neurotics. Therefore, there are different conditions that can affect EWT and different levels of anxiety.