EWT: anxiety

• anxiety has a negative effect on recall (weapon focus)

  • Anxiety causes physiological arousal, hindering attention and memory.
  • Presence of a weapon induces anxiety, leading to "weapon focus."
  • Witnesses fixate on the weapon, reducing recall for other event details.
• Johnson and Scott conducted a study where participants believed they were in a lab experiment.

  • Low-anxiety condition: Heard casual conversation, saw a man with a pen and grease on his hands.
  • High-anxiety condition: Overheard heated argument, saw a man with a blood-covered knife.
  • Participants later identified the man from a set of 50 photos.
  • Identification rate: 49% for the pen-carrying man, 33% for the knife-carrying man.
• Tunnel theory of memory suggests enhanced memory for central events.

  • Weapon focus due to anxiety may contribute to this effect.
• anxiety has a positive effect on recall

  • Anxiety triggers physiological arousal and the fight-or-flight response. 
  • Increased alertness and awareness result from this arousal.
  • Heightened attention to cues in the situation occurs.
  • Improved memory for the event may be a consequence
  • The fight-or-flight response primes the body for effective response to threats.
  • Anxiety can enhance memory by increasing attention and alertness.
• Study by Yuille and Cutshall on a shooting in a Vancouver gun shop.

  • 21 witnesses, 13 interviewed 4-5 months later compared to police interviews recorded at the time of event
  • Accuracy measured by number of details reported.
  • Witnesses rated stress levels and emotional problems post-event.
  • Witnesses remained very accurate over time, with little change in recall.
  • Some inaccuracies in details like colors and estimates of age/height/weight.
  • Highest stressed participants were most accurate (88% vs. 75% for less stressed)
• yuille and cutshall's study suggests anxiety doesn't impair eyewitness memory, may even enhance it in real-world situations.
• • Yerkes and Dodson proposed an inverted U-shaped relationship between emotional arousal and performance.
• • Deffenbacher reviewed 21 studies of eyewitness testimony (EWT), noting contradictory findings on anxiety's effects.
• • Deffenbacher applied the Yerkes-Dodson law to explain these findings.
  • Emotional and physiological arousal occur when witnessing a crime/accident, leading to anxiety.
  • Lower anxiety levels correspond to lower recall accuracy, with accuracy increasing as anxiety rises.
  • There's an optimal anxiety level for maximum accuracy.
  • Excessive arousal beyond this optimal point results in a drastic decline in recall accuracy.
• pickel pt 1

  P - one limitation of the study by johnson and scott is that it may not have tested anxiety

  E - By using items of varying unusualness in a salon video, Pickel found that participants focused more on unusual items like a handgun, regardless of the anxiety they induced, indicating a strong association between uniqueness and attention.
• pickel pt 2

  E - This challenges the traditional view that anxiety is the main factor in the weapon focus effect, proposing that cognitive processes may prioritize the unexpectedness of the item over anxiety or threat.

  L - pickel's findings broadens our understanding of memory recall in crime scenarios beyond anxiety-driven explanations, emphasising the need to consider factors like unusualness
• christianson and hubinette pt 1

  P - another strength is evidence showing that anxiety can have positive effects on the accuracy of recall

  E - Christianson and Hubinette interviewed 58 witnesses to bank robberies in Sweden, finding recall accuracy exceeding 75% across all witnesses. Direct victims, assumed to experience the most anxiety, demonstrated even higher accuracy.
• christianson and hubinette pt 2

  E - this establishes that high anxiety could be the result for better memory recall, going against the common assumption of impaired recall under stress

  L - their research suggests that anxiety can pose as a benefit and can aid in increased accuracy of recalling an event
• P -however a limitation to this study is the lack of control over post event discussion

  E - christianson and hubinette interviewed their participants several months after the event so they had no control over what happened to their participants in the intervening time

  E - Without controlling these factors, it's hard to say if anxiety alone affected recall accuracy or if other components played a role.

  L - therefore it is possible that a lack of control over confounding variables may be responsible for these findings, invalidating their support