Accuracy of eyewitness testimony: anxiety

• Anxiety—an unpleasant emotional state that is often accompanied by increased heart rate and rapid breathing
• Stress and anxiety


  Have a negative effect on memory and performance generally
• Johnson and Scott (1976) study


  Anxiety might reduce the accuracy of EWT (Eyewitness Testimony) due to the weapon focus effect—the view that a weapon in a criminal's hand distracts attention from other features and therefore reduces the accuracy of identification
• Procedure


  1. Participants sat in a waiting room where they heard an argument in an adjoining room and then saw a man run through the room carrying either a pen covered in grease (low anxiety condition) or a knife covered in blood (high anxiety weapon focus condition)

  2. Participants were then asked to identify the man from a set of photographs
• Presence of a weapon caused eye movements and attention to be physically drawn towards the weapon itself and away from other things such as the person's face
• Findings supported the idea of a weapon focus effect
• Alternative argument


  High anxiety/high arousal creates more enduring and accurate memories
• Some suggest it is adaptive to remember events that are emotionally important
• Yuille and Cutshall (1986) study


  • Interviewed 13 witnesses of a real-life shooting 5months after the incident, compared with the original police interviews
  • Witnesses were asked to rate how stressed they had felt at the time of the incident, using a 7-point scale
• Witnesses were very accurate and there was little change in the amount or accuracy after 5 months
• Participants who reported the highest levels of stress were most accurate (about 88% compared to 75% for the less-stressed group)