Anxiety

• What dod Johnson and Scott do? (AO1)

  • Ppts sat in a waiting room of a study. They overheard an altercation.
  • Then a man walks out with a 1. Pen (49% identified man correctly ) or 2. Knife (33% identified man correctly)
  • Ppts had to identify the man from 50 photos
  • Anxiety hinders recall
• What did Parker do? (AO1)

  • people were interviewed after a real hurricane
  • Parker looked for relationship between memory of events and damage to their home
  • If people experienced a moderate level of anxiety - they had the most accurate recall
  • Anxiety helps
• What did Yuille and Cutshall do? (AO1) 


  • 13 witnesses to a real bank robbery (some were threatened)
  • High anxiety
  • Interviewed immediately after by police then 4 months later by psychologists with 2 leading questions
  • The statements matched
  • Anxiety helps
• What did Valentine do? (Extra AO1) 


  • used heart rate monitoring on people visiting London dungeons labyrinth
  • People in 2 conditions :
  • High anxiety (man jumps out) - least accurate recall of perpetrator
  • Low anxiety ( man walks through ) - high accurate really of the perpetrator
• Weapon focus - AO3 (Johnson and Scott) 


  if a weapon is present, we are more likely to look at that rather than the perpetrator due to fear ( need to watch weapon location for safety )
• What is fight vs flight? (Yuille and Cutshall AO3)


  • A stressful situation kicks our fight or flight system into action
  • Prepares our bodies physiologically
  • Increased heart rate - more blood to the brain and muscles, pupils dilate = physiological awareness
  • Physiological awareness = higher recall
• Inverted-U theory ( Parker AO3 )


  • highest recall happens when we are moderately anxious
  • Inverted U on a graph (x-axis = anxiety low to high, y-axis = recall low to high)
• What is Tunnel Theory (Valentine AO3)

  • we only focus on specific aspects of incidents, meaning we miss a lot of detail
  • Low anxiety =limited view of detail (unaware)
  • moderate anxiety = wider view of detail (aware but not overwhelmed)
  • high anxiety = too much detail (too aware)
• Weakness of anxiety on recall - ‘surprise’ 


  • Ppts were in a hairdressers and a man walks in carrying :
  • A wallet (low threat, low surprise)
  • Scissors ( high threat, low surprise)
  • A raw chicken (low threat, high surprise)
  • Gun (high threat, high surprise)
  • Gun and raw chicken had the worst recall of the perpetrator
• Demand characteristics weakness

  • In a lot of studies, ppts know they are in studies therefore are likely to change their behaviour from natural behaviour (not Parker and Yuille + Cutshall )
  • Lacks ecological validity in explaining the effect of anxiety