Anxiety

• Anxiety


  Anxiety is a state of emotional and physical arousal. The emotions include having worried thoughts and feelings of tension. Physical changes include an increased heart rate and sweating.

  It is thought that anxiety affects the recall of eyewitnesses, but psychologists disagree on how.

  Some think anxiety has a negative effect on recall – it creates physiological arousal in the body which prevents us paying attention to important cues, so recall is worse.
• Anxiety


  Some think anxiety has a positive effect on recall – the physiological arousal from anxiety triggers the fight or flight response which increases our alertness and improves our memory for the event because we become more aware of cues in the situation
• Participants


  • Left in a waiting area outside a laboratory whilst waiting for the "real" study to start
• Low anxiety situation


  1. Overheard a discussion in the laboratory about equipment failure

  2. Man leaving the laboratory holding a pen and with grease on his hands
• High anxiety situation


  1. Overheard a heated discussion in the laboratory with the sound of breaking glass and crashing chairs

  2. Man leaving the laboratory carrying a paper knife covered in blood
• Participants were later asked to identify the man from a set of 50 photographs
• 49% correctly identified the man holding the pen
• Only 33% could identify the man with the bloodstained knife
• Johnson & scott (1976)


  Study where participants were exposed to low or high anxiety situations and then asked to identify the man they saw
• Neg Affects


  •Tunnel theory argues that a witness’ attention narrows to focus on a weapon because it is the source of the anxiety. This leads to the weapon-focus effect where this tunnel focus then negatively affects the recall of the overall event.
• The Yerkes-Dodson law


  •This law states that performance (not only in memory recall, but in other processes such as sport and exams) improves with increases in arousal up to some optimal point and then declines with further increases.•
• The Yerkes-Dodson law


  An increase in anxiety leads to an increase in physiological arousal. This therefore heightens alertness and may improve our memory because we become more aware of cues in the situation.•However if it gets too high, anxiety may cause you to lose focus and therefore negatively affect performance.