anxiety

• P: a criticism of the weapon focus effect comes from pickel, who proposed that the reduced accuracy of identification could be due to surprise rather than anxiety

  E: to test this she arranged for participants to watch a thief enter a hairdressing salon carrying scissors (high threat, low surprise), handgun (high threat, high surprise), wallet (low threat, low surprise) or whole raw chicken (low threat, high surprise). identification was least accurate in the high surprise conditions rather than high threat.
• link for weapon focus effect

  L: this supports the view that the weapon focus effect is related to surprise rather than anxiety
• P: one of the strengths of the study by christianson and hubinette was that it was a study of anxiety in the context of a real crime

  E: nit may be the case that lab studies do not create the real levels of anxiety experienced by a real eyewitness during an actual crime. deffenbacher agree with this but found, from a review of 34 studies, lab studies in general demonstrate that anxiety leads to reduced accuracy and that real life studies are associated with an even greater loss in accuracy
• link for real life studies vs lab studies

  L: these findings suggest that the results from lab studies are valid, as they are supported by most real-life studies
• P: critics of the weapon focus effect have suggested that the violence of a crime may affect the accuracy of recall

  E: the study by christianson and hubinette concerned a violent real life crime. many other studies of anxiety and accuracy of identification did not involve violence. like christianson and hubinette, halford and milne found that victims of violent crimes were more accurate in their recall of crime scene information than victims of non-violent crimes

  L: this shows that there is no simple rule about the effect of anxiety on accuracy of eyewitness testimony