EWT- Anxiety

• eyewitness testimony 


  The act of a witness providing details of a crime or identity of a suspect to court.
• anxiety 


  factor that that affects EWT by having strong physical and emotional effects.
• anxiety negative effect 


  prevents an individual from paying attention to cues so recall is worse
• weapon focus effect 


  A witness will only pay attention to the weapon and not any other details
• Scott and Johnson (1976)

  • low and high anxiety condition
  • low - neutral conversation and a man walks out holding pen
  • high- heated argument and man walks out holding a knife
  • ppts asked to identify man
• scott and johnson’s findings

  • low anxiety - 49%
  • high anxiety - 33%
• low internal validity 


  it can be argued that Scott and Johnson were not testing anxiety and the reason that the participants focus on the weapon might be because they was surprised rather than scared. For example, Pickel conducted an experiment using scissors, a handgun, a wallet, and raw chicken in a hairdressing salon video. EWT accuracy was poorer for raw chicken as it is the most surprising.
• ethical issues 


  Scott and Johnson study has some ethical implications. The participants were unaware the study had begun as they were sitting in the waiting room when they heard the argument and saw the blooded knife. They were exposed to psychological harm as they would’ve become distressed. Furthermore, the participants were deceived.
• lack of real world applications

  Real life study by Yuille and Cutshall. 13 out of 21 witnesses agreed to take part in a follow-up research interview 5 months after seeing a real life shooting. The EWT were highly accurate despite being in a high anxiety condition, this shows how accuracy of EWT is not affected by anxiety.