Anxiety Affecting EWT Accuracy

• Johnson & Scott 1976 conducted a study named the 'Weapon Focus Effect' which investigated the effect of anxiety on the accuracy of EWT: 1

  • Aim: to see if catching sight of a weapon narrows the focus of what is attended to by the witness.
  • Procedure: volunteer PPs arrived at a room to take part in an experiment in an adjoining lab, were told they were in the waiting room.
  • Condition 1: PPs overheard discussion about faulty equipment, followed by a man leaving the lab holding a pen with grease on his hands.
• Johnson & Scott 1976 Weapon Focus Effect Study: 2

  • Condition 2: PPs overheard an angry exchange & the sound of breaking glass, followed by a man carrying a knife covered in blood.
  • Then PPs looked at 50 photographs to identify the man.
• Johnson & Scott 1976 Weapon Focus Effect Study:

  • Findings: PPs in pen condition correctly identified the man 49% of the time & PPs in knife condition identified the man 33% of the time.
  • Conclusion: the fear & anxiety caused the witness to concentrate on the weapon, distracting attention away from the man's face.
  • Supports the fact that high levels of anxiety can cause eyewitness testimony to be less detailed & accurate.
• Evaluation for Weapon Focus Effect Study- Strengths:

  • Better ecological validity as PPs didn't know it wasn't really happening at the time. More likely to be reacting naturally- their actual behaviour.
  • Easy to replicate.
• Evaluation for Weapon Focus Effect Study- Weaknesses:

  • Ethical issues- PP's well-being (deception involved).
  • Christianson & Hubinette (1993) study directly contradicts, as they found evidence of enhanced recall when they questioned 58 real witnesses to bank robberies in Sweden- witnesses were either employees or customers (victims or bystanders) & found that all witnesses showed generally good memories of the robbery itself.
  • Witnesses who most anxious (victims) had best recall of all. Study shows anxiety does not reduce accuracy of recall (interviews conducted 4-15 months after robberies)
• Influences on Eyewitness Testimony:

  • Anxiety: stress can affect accuracy.
  • Yerkes-Dodson Law: performance is related to arousal level (of anxiety).
  • As anxiety increases, performance of recall increases up to a point, when extremely stressed, this decreases performance.
  • On a graph, a bell-shaped curve is depicted with low arousal at bottom left point, medium arousal at highest & high arousal at bottom right point- with performance at the side.
• Evaluation of Anxiety Affecting EWT Accuracy- Weakness:

  • Pickel 1998 proposed that Weapon Focus may not be caused by anxeity, but rather due to surprise.
  • To test this, she arranged for PPs to watch a thief enter a hairdressing salon carrying scissors (high threat, low surprise), hand gun (high threat, high surprise), wallet (low threat, low surprise) or a raw chicken (low threat, high surprise).
  • Identification was least accurate in the high surprise conditions rather than high threat.
  • Supports the view that the Weapon Focus Effect is related to surprise rather than anxiety.
• Evaluation of Anxiety Affecting EWT Accuracy- Weakness:

  • The impact of individual differences.
  • Bothwell suggested that neurotic personalities are more prone to impacts of anxiety than stable personalities.
  • PPs tested were labelled with 'neurotic' or 'stable' & it was found that the 'stable' PPs showed rising levels of accuracy as stress levels increased, whereas the opposite was true for neurotics- their accuracy levels decreased as stress increased.
  • Therefore, personality might be a more important factor than anxiety when impacting accuracy of EWT.