EWT - ANXIETY

• Anxiety – a state of emotional and physical arousal. Physical changes include increased heart rate and sweatiness. 
• JOHNSON and SCOTT (1976) - anxiety has a negative effect on recall 

  Procedure: participants believed they were taking part in a lab study 

  1. Low anxiety condition – overhead a casual conversation then saw a man walk past with a pen and grease on his hands. 
  2. High anxiety condition – overheard a heated conversation and then heard breaking glass and a man walked past with a bloody knife. 

  Results: those who witnessed the man holding the pen identified the target 49% of the time compared to the knife – identified 33% of the time. 
• Weapon focus effect


  This is the tendency for witnesses who observe an armed criminal to direct their attention towards the weapon. They fail to encode and remember the perpetrators physical appearance. 
• YUILLE and CUTHSALL (1986) - effect of anxiety on the accuracy of EWT 

  Procedure – eyewitnesses were obtained from a real life shooting in a gun shop in Canada. There were 21 witnesses who were interviewed and 13 agreed to the study. Interviews were held 5 months after the incident. The accuracy was determined by the number of details and the participants were also asked to rate how stressed they felt on a scale from 1-7 and if they had any emotional problems e.g. sleeplessness. 
• YUILLE and CUTHSALL (1986) - effect of anxiety on the accuracy of EWT

  Findings: witnesses had remarkably accurate memory of a stressful event involving weapons. Even with two leading questions the recall accuracy as not affected  

  Stressed – 88% accurate recall 

  Not stressed – 75% accurate recall 
• Explanation: Yerkes-Dodson Law


  This law describes the relationship between stress and performance. In particular, it suggests performance increases with physiological or mental arousal but only to a certain point. 

  A)

  
• Strength

  ✅ Real life application – if anxiety levels are too high or too low it negatively affects EWT accuracy – vital for police and legal professionals to understand that anxiety affects the EWT. 
• Limitation (1)

  ❌ Weapon focus may not be relevant (shock not anxiety affecting EWT). A study (PICKEL) was conducted where a person had the following handheld items: scissors, handgun, wallet, or a raw chicken in a hairdressing salon. Results – handgun and raw chicken led to poor EWT – people focus on unusual items. 
• Limitation (2)

  ❌ Lack of control in field studies – many things could distort their memory of the event. Extraneous variables are responsible for the accuracy of EWT – difficult to establish cause of IV (anxiety) and effect on DV (accuracy of recall) - affects internal validity of the research. 
• Limitation (3)


  ❌ Ethical issues – exposed to robberies, knife crimes etc which may cause psychological harm especially if they have previously experienced such event. Therefore, the participants are not protected from harm.