ewt - anxiety

• How does anxiety affect EWT?

  • the emotional state caused by high anxiety may negatively affect how we store and encode info ; affecting how accurately we can recall the correct info
  • lab studies show high anxiety leads to poor accuracy of recall
  • EWT are most accurate when the anxiety level is somewhere in between low and high
• What does the Yerkes-Dodson curve show?

  medium anxiety = optimal recall

  
• Explain the weapon focus effect.

  • a different account of why anxiety might reduce the accuracy of EWT
  • the idea that a weapon in a criminals hands distracts attention (because of the anxiety it creates) from other features negatively affecting the ability to recall important details
• What was the aim of Johnson and Scott’s Study?

  to investigate whether high levels of anxiety will affect accuracy of recall
• What was the procedure of Johnson and Scott’s Study?

  • 2 experimental conditions: with or w/o weapon
  • ppts asked to sit outside a room and witness what they thought to be a genuine conversation between 2 people
  • low anxiety - no weapon - peaceful convo - when finished a man emerged holding a pen with grease on his hands
  • high anxiety - weapon - heated convo - ppts heard glass breaking and a man emerged holding a knife covered in blood
  • DV - number of correct identification made of the man from 50 photographs
• What were the findings of Johnson and Scott’s Study?

  • low anxiety - 49% were able to correctly identify man holding the pen
  • high anxiety - 33% able to correctly identify man holding knife
• What can we conclude from Johnson and Scott’s Study?

  the weapon may have distracted attention from the person holding it this therefore might explain why eyewitnesses sometimes have poor recall for certain details of violent crimes involving weapons where anxiety may be heightened
• What was the procedure of Loftus and Burns’ study?

  • ppts watched simulated robbery
  • some watched non-violent version
  • some watched violent version where a boy was shot in the face
• What were the findings of Loftus and Burns’ study?

  those who watched the non-violent version recalled significantly more details of the crime than violent version
• What can we conclude from Loftus and Burns’ study?

  the shock of the event had heightened arousal and therefore disrupted memory storage details of the crime
• Lacks validity.


  -/ criticised for being artificial - i.e video of robbery is not the same as real robbery - cannot reliably create real levels of anxiety for practical + ethical reasons - real life events often take place unexpectedly in a high tension atmosphere ; may be recalled differently - ALSO Foster et al found that if ppts thought they were watching a real life robbery important to a real trial there identification of the robber = much more accurate - findings from controlled research may lack ecological validity which may undermine findings
• Surprise not anxiety.


  -/Pickel suggested reduced accuracy due to weapon focus effect may be due to surprise not anxiety - ppts asked to watch scenarios - ht ls, ht hs, lt ls, lt hs - accuracy = poorer in high surprise conditions rather than high threat - suggest WFE may be due to surprise + unusual rather than anxiety - leads us to question internal validity of the research e.g. Johnson + Scott’s as such studies may not be measuring the effects of anxiety on accuracy of EWT at all
• Contradictory evidence.


  -/ criticited for not reflecting real life EWT - researchers conducted a natural experiment which found emotional arousal may enhance accuracy of memory - questioned 110 real witnesses to bank robberies - those who were threatened + experienced high levels of anxiety = much more accurate than less emotionally aroused - conclude that people are good at remembering highly stressful events in real life raster than in artificial setting - casts doubt on Yerkes-Dodson curve hypothesis
• Ethical issues.


  -/ Psychologists cannot induce unnecessary psychological harm in research + must gain informed consent - however with EWT an important variable is anxiety - method to cause it (violent films) may still cause mild harm especially to children - ethically research into this area may be questionable - HOWEVER if anxiety isn’t created in the lab findings=invalid - research must be subjected to a cost-benefit analysis