Eye witness testimony : Anxiety

• What is anxiety?

  -An unpleasant emotional state that is often accompanieed by increased heart rate and rapid breathing
• Aim of Johnson and Scott (1976) -

  To investigate the weapon focus effect
• Define the weapon focus effect -

  -Occurs when a weapon distracts eyewitnesses, harming memory for the perpetrator and other details.

  -One explanation is that weapons are unusual in most contexts, and unusual objects distract eyewitnesses
• Procedure of Johnson and Scott-

  -Participants were sat in waiting room, where they overheard an argument in the adjoining room

  -They saw a man running from the room with either a pen covered in grease (low anxiety condition) or a knife covered in blood (high anxiety condition)

  -Ppts were then asked to identify man from a set of photographs
• Findings of Johnson and Scott

  -The mean accuracy of low anxiety condition was 49%

  -Mean accuracy of high anxiety condition was 33%
• Conclusion of Johnson and Scott-

  -Suggested that when a weapon is present, peoples attention becomes focused on the weapon and they do not take in other information.

  -This would suggest that anxiety has a negative effect on accuracy of EWT
• Aim of Christianson and Hubinette -

  -To see if anxiety enhanced accuracy of recall
• Procedure of Christianson and Hubinette -

  -Used 58 real witnesses to bank robberies in Sweden.

  -The witnesses were either High anxiety group victims (bank teller) or Low anxiety group bystanders (other employee or customer)

  -The interviews were conducted 4-15 months after the robberies
• Findings of Christianson and Hubinette-

  -Found all witnesses showed generally good recall for details of robbery itself (75% accurate recall).

  -The victims in high anxiety group had best recall of all

  -Suggesting that anxiety doesnt reduce accuracy of recall
• Deffenbacher-

  -Conducted a meta analysis of 21 studies into anxiety and accuracy of EWT.

  -He found that 10 of these studies had linked higher arousal levels to eye witness accuracy and 11 had found the opposite

  -Suggested that Yerkes-Dodson effect can account for this inconsistency
• Strength - supporting evidence by Loftus and Burns

  -Ppts were allocated 1 of 2 conditions.

  1)Watch violent short film with boy shot in head

  2)Watched non violent film of crime

  -Ppts less accurate recall when they saw violent short film than those who watched non violent movie

  -Demonstrating support as it shows when people witness anxiety provoking situations they are less likely to recall accurately
• Criticism - Ethical issue

  -Anxiety research raises ethical issues

  -Ppts in Loftus were deceived as they were led to believe it was real situation, it may have cause psychological harm to ppts

  -They didnt provide fully informed consent and were not aware of their right to withdraw from study

  -Researchers attempted to overcome this by fully debriefing ppts at end of study and given them right to withdraw
• Strength - Attention

  -Loftus showed that anxiety does focus attention on central features of a crime such as a weapon

  -Researchers monitored eyewitnesses eye movements and found that the presence of a weapon caused attention to be physically drawn towards the weapon itself and away from other things like a persons face
• Strength and weakness of Christianson and Hubinette - Real life

  -The study is the use of a real life crime

  -However, Deffenbacher found in another meta analysis that anxiety reduced accuracy in lab studies and had an even more negative impact on real life studies

  -This contradicts findings of Christianson and Hubinette
• Evaluation - Coping with anxiety

  -Some people cope better with anxiety than others

  -Bothwell investigated difference in accuracy between people who are very anxious (neurotics) and more emotionally sensitive people (stable)

  -Found that neurotics become less accurate when stressed, whereas emotionally stable individuals become more accurate