Robert Yerkes and John Dodson (1908) claimed that the relationship between emotional arousal and performance looked like an 'inverted U'.
Contradictory findings
Kenneth Deffenbacher (1983) reviewed 21 studies of EWT and found contradictory findings on the effects of anxiety. He used the Yerkes-Dodson Law to explain the findings:
When we witness a crime/accident we become emotionally and physiologically aroused.
Lower levels of anxiety/arousal produce lower levels of recall accuracy, then memory becomes more accurate as this level increases.
However, there is an optimal level of anxiety, which is the point of maximum accuracy - recall suffers a drastic decline if more aroused
