factors affecting eyewitness testimony-anxiety

• What is anxiety?

  A state of emotional and physical arousal. The emotions include having worried thoughts and feelings of tension. Physical changes include increased heart rate and sweatiness.
• Describe why some believe 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. One approach of studying anxiety and EWT is by looking at the effect of the presence of a weapon which creates anxiety. This leads to a focus on the weapon, reducing a witnesses recall for other details of the event.
• Describe the research procedure that supports anxiety as having a negative effect on recall?

  Johnson and Scott had participants believe they were taking part in a lab study. While in the waiting room, in the low-anxiety condition, participants heard a casual conversation in the room next door followed by a man walking past with a pen and grease on his hands. In the high-anxiety condition, participants overheard a heated argument followed by a man walking out the room holding a knife covered in blood.
• Describe the findings/conclusions of Johnson and Scott's research?

  49% of pps in the low-anxiety condition were able to identify the man from 50 photos however only 33% of pps from the low-anxiety condition could identify him. So anxiety negatively effects EWT due to weapon focus as a result of anxiety.
• Describe why some believe anxiety has a positive effect on recall?

  Witnessing a stressful event creates anxiety through physical arousal within the body. The fight or flight response is triggered, increasing alertness which may improve memory for the event as we become more aware of cues in the situation.
• Describe the research that supports the idea anxiety has a positive effect on recall? (Can be used as AO3).

  Christianson interviewed 58 witnesses of real life bank robberies to recall events. The participants were either victims (high anxiety) or bystanders (low anxiety). They found that anxiety didn't affect recall, it was more than 75% across all witnesses, in fact victims were actually more accurate. This finding is from an actual crime (unlike Johnson and Scott's findings which may not represent real life effects of anxiety on EWT) and so confirms anxiety does not reduce the accuracy of recall for eyewitnesses and may even enhance it.
• How can the Yerks Dodson law be used to explain contradictory findings on the effects of anxiety?

  According to Yerks and Dodson, the relationship between emotional and physical arousal looks like an 'inverted U'. If an individual isn't sufficiently aroused (ie not paying attention) their recall of events will be useless; if they're over aroused (besides themselves with anxiety) their recall will also be useless. The eyewitness needs to be at optimal arousal/level of anxiety in order to produce the most accurate recall.
• Describe a limitation to Johnson and Scott's findings?

  It may not have tested anxiety, the reason participants focused on the weapon may be because they were surprised at what they saw rather than scared. Pickel conducted an experiment using scissors, chicken and a handgun as the hand-held items in a hairdressing salon video (where scissors would be high anxiety and low unusualness). EWT was significantly poorer in the high unusualness conditions (chicken and handgun).

  This suggests that the weapon focus effect is due to unusualness rather than anxiety/threat and therefore tells us nothing specifically about the effects of anxiety on EWT.
• Describe a limitation to Christiansons research support for anxiety impacting EWT positively?

  Christianson interviewed their participants several months after the event and so the researchers had no control over what happened to their participants in the intervening time (e.g post-event discussions). The effects of anxiety may have been overwhelmed by these other factors and impossible to assess by the time participants were interviewed. Therefore it may be possible that confounding variables may be responsible for the findings rather than affects of anxiety, reducing the validity of results.