A03

• L: Demand characteristics may affect lab studies of anxiety?

  • Most Ps in controlled lab studies are aware they're watching a filmed and staged crime for a reason to do with a study
  • They may work out that they will be asked questions about what they've seen, they may give responses which they believe to be helpful to the researcher
  • The research isn't measuring the accuracy of EWT and this reduces the validity of the research investigating the effects of anxiety
• L: The inverted-U explanation is too simplistic?

  • Anxiety is difficult to define and measure because it has too many elements - cognitive, behavioural, emotional and physical
  • The inverted-U explanation assumes that one of these is linked to poor performance - physiological arousal
  • The explanation fails to account for other factors for example, the effect of the emotional experience of witnessing a crime e.g. terror, on the accuracy of memory
• L: ethical issues in this area?

  • Creating anxiety in Ps is potentially unethical because it may subject people to psychological harm purely for research purposes
  • So real-life studies are beneficial, psychologists interview people who have already witnessed an event so there's no need to create it
  • Ethical issues don't challenge the findings of studies e.g. Johnson and Scott - but they do raise questions about conducting such research
• L: field studies lack control of variables?

  • Real-life witnesses are interviewed sometime after the event, many things happen to them in the meantime that researchers can't control
  • Examples: eyewitnesses discuss the event with others, they read or view accounts in the media, the police interview may influence their memory - post-event discussion
  • These extraneous variables may be responsible for the (in)accuracy of recall, not anxiety, it's difficult to isolate the variables
• L: Johnson and Scott's study may test surprise not anxiety?

  • Ps may focus on a weapon because they're surprised at what they see rather than because they're scared
  • Pickel (98) used scissors, handgun, wallet and raw chicken as hand-held items in a hairdressing salon, EWT accuracy was poorer for high unusualness - chicken and handgun
  • Weapon focus effect is due to unusualness rather than anxiety/threat and therefore tells us, nothing specifically about the effects of anxiety on EWT