Anxiety

• Scott et al.

  participants who watched knife eyewitness testimony was worse than those who watched pens

  weapon focus made EWT worse

  suggests high anxiety makes EWTs less accurate
• Dodson's Law

  anxiety affects EWTs as a bell curve: low and high anxiety makes them less accurate, but moderate anxiety can improve it
• Cutshall et al.

  witnesses to a real shooting gave an EWT and rated how stressed they were at the time

  people who were more stressed were more accurate

  suggests anxiety improves EWT accuracy
• Anxiety improves recall evaluation

  + Christianson et al.

  • people involved the most with a bank robbery (who experienced the most anxiety) had the most accurate recall

  + high external validity

  • research supporting high anxiety used real life events to study the anxiety so have high ecological and external validity

  - contradictory evidence

  • Scott et al. found that anxiety had a negative impact on recall
• Anxiety worsens recall evaluation

  + Valentine et al.

  • people with higher anxiety had worse recall when remembering details about a London Dungeon actor

  - Pickel study

  • instead of weapon focus, it is unusual focus as people had worse recall when someone had a more unusual item in hand
  • this means that anxiety was not tested and the weapon focus theory has low validity

  - low ecological validity

  • studies into anxiety worsening recall all use low-stake conditions where the participant was not at risk of being harmed (Scott: ran past them and did not see an event occur, Valentine: paid to be scared in London Dungeon)
  • means that real life events where witness is in danger may have a different effect on EWT

  - contradictory evidence

  • Cutshall et al. found that anxiety improves recall