Anxiety

• The effects of anxiety 


  • Anxiety - state of emotional and physical arousal
  • emotions - worried thoughts and feelings of tension
  • Physical - increased heart rate and sweating
• Negative effects on recall

  • Anxiety creates physiological arousal in body which prevents us from paying attention to important cues = recall is worse
  • Tunnel theory - witnesses' attention narrows to focus on the weapon because it is the source of anxiety = weapon-focus effect
  • negatively affects recall of the overall event
• Research on the negative effect

  • Johnson and Scott (1976)
  • Participants believed they were in a lab study - whilst seated in "waiting room" one of two conditions occurred :
  • low-anxiety condition
  • heard casual convo in next room and then saw a man walk past carrying a pen with grease on his hands
  • high-anxiety condition
  • heard a heated argument and sound of breaking glass then saw a man walk past with a knife covered in blood
• Research on the negative effect 


  • Findings and conclusions
  • Participants then asked to pick out then man from a set of 50 photos :
  • low-anxiety = 49% identified him
  • high-anxiety = 33% identified him
  • Tunnel theory - argues that people have enhanced memory for central events
  • Weapon focus as a result of anxiety can have this effect
• Positive effects on recall

  • The physiological arousal from anxiety triggers the fight or flight response
  • Increases alertness which improves our memory for the event - we become more aware of cues
• Research on the positive effect

  • Yullie and Cutshall (1986)
  • Study of an actual shooting in a gun shop in Vancouver, Canada - shop owner shot a thief dead
  • 21 witnesses - 13 took part in study
  • Interviewed them 4-5 months after the incident and compared this to the original police interviews
  • Accuracy was determined by the number of details reported in each account
  • Witnesses asked to rate how stressed they felt at the time of the incident on a 7 point scale
  • also asked if they have had emotional problems since (eg. sleeplessness)
• Research on the positive effect

  • Findings and conclusions
  • Witnesses were very accurate in accounts and there was little change in the amount recalled or accuracy after 5 months
  • Some details less accurate - eg. colour of items or estimates for age/height/weight of someone
  • Partciapants which reported the highest levels of stress were most accurate (88%) vs (75%) low anxiety
  • Suggests that anxiety doesnt have a detrimental effect on accuracy of EWT in real-world context
• Yerkes-Dodson law 


  • Yerkes and Dodson (1908)
  • looked at the relationship between emotional arousal and performance
  • said that it looks like "an inverted U"

  
• Explaining the contradictory findings 


  • Deffenbacher (1983)
  • reviewed 21 studies of EWT
  • found contradictory findings on the effects of anxiety - explained it with Yerkes-Dodson Law
  • When we witness a crime we become emotionally and physiologically aroused
  • emotional changes - anxiety
  • physiological changes - fight or flight response
  • Low levels of anxiety/arousal = lower levels of recall accuracy
  • becomes more accurate as levels increase
  • optimal level of anxiety = max accuracy
  • if experience any more arousal = drastic decline in recall
• Evaluation - not actually testing anxiety 


  • Johnson and Scott may not have tested anxiety
  • participants may have focused on the weapon because they were surprised at what they saw rather than scared
  • Pickle (1998)
  • video of a hair dressing salon where there were different hand held items :
  • scissors, handgun, wallet or a raw chicken
  • scissors = high anxiety / low unusualness
  • Eyewitness accuracy significantly poorer in high unusualness conditions (chicken and handgun)
  • Suggests that weapon focus is due to unusualness rather than anxiety/threat
  • so tells us nothing about effects of anxiety on EWT
• Evaluation - support for negative effects

  • Valentine and Messout (2009)
  • supports research on weapon focus - finding negative effects recall
  • real world setting of the Horror labyrinth in London Dungeons
  • participants given heart rate monitor and sent in to labyrinth
  • used an objective measure (heart rate) to divide participants into high and low anxiety groups
• Evaluation - support for negative effects

  • At end gave participants questionnaires to self asses levels of anxiety / asked to describe person they encountered in labyrinth
  • high-anxiety = recalled fewest correct details / more mistakes
  • then asked to identify actor in a lineup
  • high-anxiety = 17% identified correctly vs low-anxiety = 75%
  • Anxiety disrupted the participants ability to recall details about actor = supporting negative effects of anxiety on immediate EW recall of stressful event
• Evaluation - support for positive events

  • Christianson and Hubinette (1993)
  • interviewed 58 witnesses to actual bank robberies in Sweden
  • some were directly involved (workers) and others indirectly (bystanders)
  • assumed those directly involved would have most anxiety
  • Found recall was 75% accurate across all witnesses
  • direct victims - even more accurate
  • Findings from actual crimes confirm that anxiety can enhance recall
• Evaluation - counterpoint to support for positive effects

  • Christianson and Hubinette interviewed their participants several months after the event (4-15 months)
  • so had no control over what happened in the intervening time (eg. post-event discussion)
  • effects of anxiety may have been overwhelmed by these other factors = impossible to assess this at time of interview
  • Lack of control over confounding variables may be responsible for these findings = invalidating their support
• Evaluation - problems with inverted-U theory 


  • Inverted-U theory = explains contradictory findings
  • However, ignores the fact that anxiety has many elements
  • cognitive, behavioural , emotional and physical
  • Only focuses on physical arousal - assumes this is the only aspect linked to EWT
  • Cognitive may be important too - as it a stressful situation