EWT- anxiety

• EWT recall may be affected during initial coding of the information.

  • The emotional state caused by high anxiety may negatively affect how we actually store and encode the information therefore affecting how accurately we can recall the correct information.
  • Laboratory studies demonstrate that high anxiety leads to poor accuracy of recall.
  • EWT is most accurate when the anxiety level is somewhere in between low and high.
• Yerkes-Dodsons Curve:

  o High Anxiety = Poor Recall

  o Medium Anxiety = Optimal Recall

  o Low Anxiety = Poor Recall
• Anxiety might reduce the accuracy of EWT; of the weapons focus effect

  – the view that a weapon in a criminal’s hands distracts attention (because of the anxiety it creates) from other features negatively affecting the ability to recall important details
• Johnson & Scott anxiety->

  P: 2 experimental conditions( 1 w weapon, 1 w/o), ppts asked to wait outside of room where they thought they heard a genuine discussion between 2 ppl

  • Low Anxiety (no weapon)– conversation was peaceful about some office equipment. When they were finished a man emerged holding a pen and with grease on his hands.
  • High Anxiety (with weapon) – The conversation was more heated, ppts heard breaking glass and a man emerged holding a knife covered in blood
  • DV – the number of correct identifications made of the man from 50 photographs
• Johnson&Scott

  F: Low anxiety(no weapon) condition, 49% of ppts were able to accurately identify the man holding a pen from the photographs.

  High anxiety (with weapon) condition, memory recall was much less as there was only 33% accuracy from participants.

  C: Suggests the weapon may have distracted attention from the person holding it-> Explains why eyewitnesses sometimes have poor recall for certain details of violent crimes involving weapons; anxiety maybe heightened.
• AO3 of research into anxiety: replicability+reliability (consistency) // lacks validity (artifical vs irl)(Foster), Surprise not anxiety (Pickel), Condradictory evidence (Christianson and Hubinette), Ethical issues
• Lacks validity(Foster)->artificial eg using a video of a robbery is not the same.

  -We cannot reliably create real levels of anxiety experienced by a real eyewitness during an actual crime in a laboratory for practical and ethical reasons.

  -Real life events often take place unexpectedly & in an atmosphere of high tension .'. be recalled significantly different to laboratory settings. (1)
• Lacks validity (Foster)(2):

  • Foster found that if ppts thought they were watching a real-life robbery important to a real trial, their identification of the robber was more accurate than if they did not
  • Findings from controlled research settings lack ecological validity, which in turn may undermine the findings that anxiety leads to inaccurate memory recall
• Surprise not anxiety (Pickel)- suggests that reduced accuracy of recal by the weapon focus effect is due to surprise not anxiety. Ppts were asked to watch a thief enter a hairdressing salon carrying:

  • scissors (high threat, low surprise)
  • handgun (high threat, high surprise)
  • wallet (low threat, low surprise)
  • whole raw chicken (low threat, high surprise)

  F: EWT accuracy was poorer in the high surprise conditions rather than the high threat conditions

  -WFE due to surprise rather than anxiety.'. leads us to question internal validity of Jonson&Scott may not be measuring effect of anxiety
• Contradictory evidence (Christianson & Hubinette)- doesnt reflect real life EWT. Natural experiment found tht emotional arousal actually enhances the accuracy of memory.Questioned 110 real witnesses to 22 real bank robberies.

  F:those threatened & experienced high anxiety were much more accurate in recall of details vs onlooks who were less emotionallly aroused

  C: vicitms of violent crimes r good at remmembering highly stressful events irl rather than in artificial setting-limitation;doubts Yerkes-Dodson curve hypothesis;high anxiety=poor recall
• Ethical issues- pyscologists studyings anxiety + EWT cannot induce unnecessary psychological harm in their research & must gain informed consent frrom ppts

  -One important variable in EWT is anxiety, unless this occurs naturally its likely that methods used to do this (eg violent film) may still cause mild harm esp to children .'. ethically research is questionable

  -If researchers dont create anxiety in the lab, findings r unlikely to be valid->demonstrates such research must be subjected to a cost-benefit analysis