Anxiety- Factors Affecting EWT Accuracy

• Anxiety has a (-) Effect on Recall (Procedure)

  Weapon Focus- anxiety creates physiological arousal in the body, preventing us from paying attention to important cues, focus on the weapon then reduces recall of other details.

  Johnson and Scott

  Procedure- had their p's believe they were taking part in a lab study, had them seated in the waiting room. Low-anxiety condition overheard a casual conversation, and saw a man walk past holding a pen with grease on hands. High-anxiety condition overheard a heated argument, accompanied by a man walking out holding a knife covered in blood.
• Anxiety has a (-) Effect on Recall (Findings and Conclusion)

  Johnson and Scott

  Findings- p's later picked out this man from a set of 50 photos. 49% who had seen the man with the pen were able to identify him, though only 33% of the group who had seen the knife could recall successfully.

  The Tunnel Theory of memory argues that people have enhanced memory for central events; weapon focus due to anxiety can have this effect.
• Anxiety has a (+) Effect on Recall (Procedure)

  When a fight-or-flight response is triggered, it increases alertness which can then improve the memory of events.

  Yuille and Cutshall

  Procedure- conducted a study from an actual shooting in a gun shop in Canada, witnesses then took part in the study. They were interviewed several months after the incident, and these were compared to original police interviews at the time of the shooting. Accuracy was determined by the number of details recounted. They were also asked to rate their stress level on a 7 point scale.
• Anxiety has a (+) Effect on Recall (Findings)

  Yuille and Cutshall

  Findings- witnesses were very accurate in their accounts, with little change in the amount recalled or the accuracy after 5 months. P's who had reported highest levels of stress were more accurate, 88% compared to 75% for the less stressed group. Suggesting anxiety can enhance EWT.
• Explaining Contradictory Findings:

  According to Yerkes and Dodson, the relationship between emotional arousal and performance is an inverted 'U' shape- calling this the Yerkes-Dodson Law, there is an optimum level of anxiety which produces maximum accuracy.
• AO3: Unusualness, not Anxiety

  A limitation of Johnson and Scott is that they haven't tested anxiety- the reason why p's may have focused on the weapon may be due to surprise rather than fear. Pickel conducted an experiment using scissors, handgun, wallet, or raw-chicken as hand-held objects in a hair salon video. Eyewitness accuracy was poorer in high unusualness situations (raw-chicken and handgun); therefore it their study doesn't demonstrate the negative effects of anxiety on EWT.
• AO3: Support for Negative Effects

  Valentine and Mescout support research on weapon focus; using an objective measure (heartbeat) they divided p's into high and low anxiety groups. In this study, anxiety clearly disrupted p's ability to recall details about an actor in London Dungeons Labyrinth. Suggesting high anxiety does have a negative effect on immediate EW recall of a stressful event.
• AO3: Support for Positive Effects

  Christianson and Hubinette interviewed 58 witnesses to an actual bank robbery in Sweden. Some directly involved (bank workers), others indirectly involved (bystanders). Researchers assumed that those directly involved would have higher anxiety levels. It was found that recall was more than 75% accurate for all witnesses, but direct victims were most accurate. Ecologically valid findings confirm the (+) effect of anxiety on EWT accuracy.
• AO3: Counterpoint to Support for (+) Effects of Anxiety

  Christianson and Hubinette

  They interviewed p's several months after the actual event. Researchers then had no control over what happened to p's in the intervening time (post-event discussion). The effects of anxiety may have been overwhelmed by these other factors, and impossible to assess by the time the p's were interviewed. Therefore the confounding variables may invalidate the research support.
• AO3: Problems with the Yerkes-Dodson Law

  It appears to be a reasonable explanation for the contradictory findings. Though it ignores that anxiety has many elements- cognitive, emotional, behavioural and physical. It just focuses on physical arousal and assumes it is the only part linked to EWT. But the cognitive (the way we think about the situation) elements may be important in our recall.