Anxiety

• How did Johnson and Scott improve the internal validity of r study?

  Deliberately used deception as the participants were led to believing that they were sitting in the waiting room, waiting for the experiment to begin, when it was actually the real experiment
• Why is the deception in Johnson and Scott’s study justifiable?

  Reduced demand characteristics to produce more genuine findings on the effects of anxiety on EWT
• Why might Johnson and Scott’s study lack internal validity?


  Participants knew that they were taking part in the experiment, which may have led to demand characteristics after all, as they might have suspected “something” might happen
• Why is it important that demand characteristics affect the internal validity of the Johnson and Scott’s study?

  We cannot be certain that it is anxiety that led to the findings, as the participants may have been more expectant than usual
• Why does Johnson and Scott’s study therefore lack credibility?

  It cannot be applied to real-life
• How can Christianson and Hubinette’s study be substantiated by real-life evidence?

  Yuille and Cutshall (1986) gathered evidence from a real-life shooting and found that all accounts were highly accurate; witnesses even resisted leading questions
• Why is it positive that Christianson and Hubinette’s study has been substantiated by real-life evidence?

  Makes the study more reliable in circumstances outside theoretical quarters
• Why might the accuracy of EWT as a result of anxiety be more complex than initially presumed?

  Deffenbacher (1983) conducted a meta-analysis of 21 studies and found that stress-performance relationship followed an inverted U, proposed by the Yerkes-Dodson Curve (1908)
• Why is it a limitation that anxiety is more complex than assumed?

  There lacks a foundation of support as previous studies may be considered too simplistic; it may be that psychologists may have to study how levels of anxiety fluctuate in an event and its impact on performance
• Outline and evaluate research into anxiety and how it impacts EWT (16 marker)

  AO1: Johnson and Scott (1976)

  AO3 (+): Improve internal validity

  AO3 (-): Lacks internal validity

  AO1: Christianson and Hubinette (1993)

  AO3 (+): Yuille and Cutshall (1986)

  AO3 (-): Deffenbacher (1983) and Yerkes-Dodson (1908)