anxiety on ewt

• When in a stressful situation, individuals may get anxious which can be very influential on the accuracy of EWT. Johnson and Scott in 1976 studied the weapon focus effect, where the criminal’s hand may distract attention from the face due to the anxiety it creates. They asked pt to sit in a waiting room where they heard an argument in an adjoining room. A man was then seen running out carrying either a pen covered in grease (low anxiety) or a knife covered in blood (high anxiety). Pt were then asked to identify the man afterwards from a set of photographs
• The findings supported the weapon focus effect with 49% identifying the man in the pen condition compared to just 33% in the knife condition. The researchers monitored eye movement and found that a presence of a weapon did make the attention physically drawn to this (away from the face)
• However, there is an alternative argument that anxiety positively effects anxiety. Christianson and Hubinette 1993 found evidence of enhanced recall when they interviewed 58 real life bank robbery witnesses. The victims were bank tellers (more anxiety) or bystanders eg the customers (lower anxiety). When interviewed 4-15 months after, there was better than 75% recall, the recall was especially high in the victims which are the higher anxiety category.
• To resolve the contradiction, Deffenbacher reviewed 21 studies on anxiety of EWT. Half showed higher recall, just over half showed the opposite. He suggested the Yerkes-Dodson effect. This suggests that the recall is highest in moderate levels of anxiety, if too extreme then the accuracy is very low.
• A criticism of the weapon focus effect is that it is due to surprise rather than anxiety.

  Pickel 1998 arranged a thief to enter a hairdressing salon carrying scissors (low surprise, high threat), a wallet (low surprise, low threat), a whole raw chicken (high surprise, low threat) and a handgun (high surprise, high threat). Identification was found to be least accurate in the high surprise rather than high threat.

  This therefore supports that the weapon focus effect is due to surprise rather than anxiety.
• One of the strengths of Christian and Hubinette’s study is that it was a real-life situation.

  Lab studies may not create the same arousal that a real-life situation brings. However, deffenbacher found from 34 studies, that lab studies do seem to bring about the same conclusions that real life studies bring, such as a loss of accuracy supported by a greater but still loss of accuracy.

  This suggests that real life studies are a strength and bring more accurate results, but lab studies still produce the same conclusions and so are seen as valid.
• A criticism of this research is that it depends on the situation.

  For example Christianson and Hubinette’s study was a real life situation, however it did not include violence that others may have. Halford and Milne 2005 found that victims of real life crimes were more accurate in the recall of the crime scene than victims of a non-violent crime.

  This shows that there is no simple answer or rule about anxiety and the link to EWT.
• There is also an issue with individual differences in relation to emotional sensitivity.

  In a study, pt were tested for personality characteristics and labelled as ‘neurotics’ or ‘stable’. It was found that stable pt showed rising levels of accuracy as stress levels increased, however neurotics showed the opposite of this, as their stress levels increased, the rate of accuracy decreased.

  This suggests that individual differences to play a big role in the accuracy of EWT in relation to anxiety.