anxiety

• anxiety is state of emotional and physical arousal (worried thoughts and feelings of tension and increased heart rate sweating)
• anxiety can have a both negative and positive effect on eyewitness testimony
• negative effect of anxiety for eyewitness testimony

  • anxiety has a strong physical arousal in body preventing us from paying attention to important cues (recall is worse)
• key study for negative effects of anxiety on eyewitness testimony

  • johnson and scott
  • looked at effects of weapons (creating anxiety) on accuracy of witness recall
• johnson and scott - keystudy for anxiety as negative effect - procedure

  • ptts believed they were taking part in lab study
  • sat in waiting room and heart argument in next room
  • 2 conditions of experiment - low anxiety (man walked out into waiting room carrying pen and grease on hands). high anxiety (argument and glass breaking - then saw men walking into waiting room holding paper knife with blood)
• findings of johnson and scotts study

  • ptts picked man from set of 50 photos
  • 49% seen man carrying pen
  • 33% seen man carrying knife with blood
• tunnel theory can explain why participants are anxious about weapon so they focused on that (nothing else) - couldn't remember other details of situation such as mans face due to anxiety preventing attention on things would could be seen as not a threat
• anxiety as a positive effect as factor affecting EWT

  • stress of witnessing crime/accident creates anxiety through psychological arousal - fight or flight response is triggered it increases the alertness and improves memory for event as we become more aware of cues around us
• key study for positive effect of anxiety

  • yuille and cutshall
  • used real life study of shooting in gun shop to understand how anxiety improves individuals memory
• yuille and cutshall - positive effect of anxiety procedure

  • use real lifes tudy of shooting in gun shop - 13 witnesses agreed to take part
  • interviwed 4-5 months after shooting - compared to original police interview
  • accuracy determined by number of details in each account - witnesses were asked to rate how stressed they felt at time
• yuille and cutshall - positive effect of anxiety study findings

  • found little changes in witness accounts - those reporting high levels of stress were most accurate
  • 88% accuracy compared to 75% with those less stressed
  • findings suggest anxiety can improve individuals memory
• inverted U can be applied to EWT

  • lower levels of anxiety produce lower levels of recall anxiety and as levels of anxiety increase - memory becomes more accurate
  • when optimal anxiety is reached (memory at maximum) recall suffers decline
• evaluation of anxiety being factor affecting EWT

  • ethical issues
  • field studies lack control
  • demand characteristics
• ethical issues being eval point for anxiety as factor affecting EWT

  • creating anxiety in ptts can put them at psychological harm purely for purpose of research
  • questionable whether benefits of research outweigh the ethical issues
• field studies lack control being eval point for anxiety as factor affecting EWT

  • researchers often interview real life eyewitnesses sometime after event - during time period all sorts can occur which researchers have no control over (discussion with others about event + accounts on social media)
  • limitation of field research as it is possible extraneous variable could be responsible for accuracy of recall
  • effects of anxiety are overwhelmed by other uncontrollable factors - leading to being impossible to assess appropriately and accurately
• demand characteristics being eval point for anxiety as factor affecting EWT

  • lab studies include johnson and scotts waiting room study
  • experiment was staged by those in the room including the man who walks out in both conditions
  • most ptts would be aware they are in waiting room for unknown reason and knew they were going to take part in some sort of study
  • most likely to work out themselves they are going to be asked about what they saw - seem to be more alert
  • suspected demand characteristics limit explanation as they weakne findings due to unknown whether recall interrupted.