Anxiety (psych.)

• Anxiety: State of emotional arousal, where there is a feeling or experience of apprehension and uncertainty brought on by a real or an anticipated threat.
• Effects of anxiety on people, mental state can impair physical and psychological functioning.
• Anxiety performance curve (Yerkes-Dodson Law)

   

  As arousal increases so does the performance, until an optimal mid point, from which when arousal increases the performance decreases.

  
• Weapon focus: Johnson and Scott (1976): weapon effect.

  Field experiment to test if participants exposed to a weapon recalled this in comparison to 100+ high control anxiety group (impaired memory).
• Weapon focus:

  Natural environment for participants - quasi experiment - natural occurring IV.

  Randomly allocate participants and the researcher manipulates the IV.
• WP: Conditions:

  1. (a) an amicable discussion about equipment failure. A man with greasy hands came out holding a pen.
  2. (b) hostile discussion followed by the sound of breaking glass and overturned furniture. A man with a knife covered in blood came out.

  The participants were given some photos and were asked to identify the man.
• WP results.

  (a) 49% correct identifications.

  (b) 33% correct identifications - weapon focus.
• WP, tunnel vision:

  Zoom in on the gun, narrowing on the gun as you are anxious and cannot explain what the offender looks like.
• Tunnel theory of memory:

  Argues that witnesses attention narrows to focus on a weapon because it is a source of anxiety. So witnesses are better at describing the weapon and not other crime scene details.
• Economic implications of psychological research:


  Police would like to know this to stop economic waste on investigation. Understanding how people get anxious and only being able to focus on the weapon.
• WP. STRENGTH - ES.

  Strength is that there is evidence support from laboratory experiments. Researchers Loftus and Burns researched weapon focus, 'was the boy show in the face or not'. 17% of high arousal vs 75% of low arousal. However this research has caused more stress than people would have in everyday life.
• WP. WEAKNESS - EV.

  Weakness is that the research lacks ecological validity. This is because there were only laboratory experiments, which didn't represent real life events due to standardised procedures. Yville and Cutshall's research supports the low ecological validity concern.