Effects of anxiety on EWT:

• STRENGTH:

  • Evidence supporting the view that anxiety has a negative effect on the accuracy of recall
  • Valentine and Mesout 2009 supports the research on weapon focus, finding negative effects on recall
  • The researchers used an objective measure (heart rate) to divide participants into high- and low-anxiety groups
  • In this study anxiety clearly disrupted the participants' ability to recall details about the actor in the London Dungeon's Labyrinth

  This suggests that a high level of anxiety does have a negative effect on the immediate eyewitness recall of a stressful event.
• LIMITATION:

  • Johnson and Scott may not have tested anxiety
  • Reason pp focused on the weapon may be because they were surprised at what they saw rather than scared
  • Pickel 1998 conducted an experiment using scissors handgun wallet or a raw chicken as the hand-held items in a hairdressing salon video where scissors would be high anxiety, low unusualness
  • Eyewitness accuracy was significantly poorer in the high unusualness conditions chicken and handgun

  Suggests its due to unusualness rather than anxiety therefore tells us nothing specifically about the effects of anxiety on EWT
• STRENGTH:

  • anxiety can have positive effects on the accuracy of recall.
  • Christianson et al interviewed 58 witnesses to actual bank robberies in Sweden
  • Some of the witnesses were directly involved (e.g. bank workers) and some were indirectly involved (e.g. bystanders)
  • Assumed that those directly involved would experience the most anxiety
  • Found that recall was more than 75% accurate across all witnesses direct victims most anxious were even more accurate

  These findings from actual crimes confirm that anxiety does not reduce the accuracy of recall for eyewitnesses and may even enhance it.