EWT- anxiety

• Anxiety is a state of emotional and physical arousal, emotions include having worried thoughts and feelings of tension
• Physical changes of anxiety include an increased heart rate and sweatiness
• Anxiety is a normal reaction to stressful situations but can affect the accuracy and detail of EWT
• Johnson and Scott (1976) aimed to study the effects of weapons and anxiety on the accuracy of EWT
• Johnson and Scott told ppts to wait in the reception area:

  1. No weapons condition heard a conversation about equipment failure, the individual walked past holding a pen with his hands covered in grease
  2. Weapon condition overheard a heated exchange, glass breaking and crashing chairs. An individual ran past holding a bloody letter opener

  Participants were asked to recall the man's identity from a set of photographs
• Johnson and Scott found that those who witnessed the man holding the pen correctly identified the target 49% of the time. Those who saw the man holding a knife identified him 33% of the time
• Johnson and Scott concluded the presence of weapons distracts participants from other details
• Weapon focus effect- the tendency for witnesses who observe an armed criminal to direct their attention towards the weapon so they fail to encode other details including the perpetrators appearance.
• the weapon focus effect can have important consequences for crime investigation when relying on EWT
• Yuille and Cutshall (1986) aimed to research the effect of anxiety on the accuracy of EWT
• Yuille and Cutshall obtained eyewitnesses from a real life shooting. 13 agreed to participate in the study. Interviews were conducted 5 months after the incident and compared to the police interviews- accuracy was determined based on how many details were correct. Eyewitnesses also ranked their stress levels at the time.
• Yuille and Cutshall found that recall was remarkably accurate. Those who reported feeling more stressed had an accurate recall of 88%, compared to those who were less stressed being accurate 75% of the time
• Yuille and Cutshall concluded that stress increases the accuracy of EWT
• Yerkes-Dodson law describes the relationship between stress and performance. It follows an inverted-U model of arousal. When stress is too high or low, performance decreases
• STRENGTHS

  • real life application- Deffenbacher et al concluded that low and high anxiety levels impact performance accuracy, important when considering EWT in court
• LIMITATIONS

  • weapon focus effect may not be relevant- Pickel (1998) found that people focus on unusual situations, not because they're scared but because they are surprised
  • Ethical issues- deception in Johnson and Scott's study may lead to psychological damage
  • lack of control in field studies- extraneous factors may be responsible for inaccuracies