anxiety

• Why does anxiety have a negative effect on recall?


  High levels of anxiety produce reduced recall of the criminals face.

  Weapon focus effect: Attention is drawn to a weapon so we lose sight of more peripheral details such as the criminal.
• + Supporting evidence for weapon focus effect


  E - Johnson and Scott: Ps were asked to sit in a waiting room where they heard an argument. A man runs out with either a pen covered in grease or a knife in blood. They were asked to identify the man. Findings: 49% identified the man with the pen, but only 33% identified the man with the knife.

  E - Shows anxiety can have a negative effect by drawing people to specific details of the crime and away from features of the criminal.

  L - Therefore, this supports the weapon focus effect but lacks ecological validity as it is an artificial task.
• - Contrasting evidence for weapon focus effect


  E - Pickel suggests that the findings in Johnson and Scott's study may be due to surprise not anxiety. P's had to watch a thief enter a hairdressing salon carrying either: A wallet (low threat, low surprise),Scissors (high threat, low surprise), A handgun (high threat, high surprise) ,A whole raw chicken (low threat, high surprise). Identification was least accurate in the high surprise conditions, not the high threat.

  E - This supports the view that weapon focus is related to surprise rather than anxiety
• Yerkes-Dodson Law


  Performance will increase with stress, but only to a certain point, where it then decreases drastically
• Why does anxiety have a positive effect on recall?


  A state of arousal improves alertness, and awareness of the situation and surroundings. The fight or flight response is triggered, increasing alertness.
• + Supporting evidence for the positive effect of anxiety (Yuille and Cutshall)


  E - Yuille and Cutshall: Interviewed 13 witnesses to a deadly shooting four months after the event. Findings: The 13 witnesses were accurate in their EWT five months later. Little change was found in their testimonies.

  E - Suggests anxiety may not be a significant problem for EWT - anxiety improves recall.

  L - Also, this experiment was a real-life situation so therefore has high ecological validity.
• / Research by Johnson and Scott - ethical issues


  E - Participants may have suffered psychological harm from the second condition which involved both a knife and blood.

  E - This breaks the ethical guidelines since it breaks the rule that participants should not suffer any psychological or physical harm during an experiment.

  L - Therefore, this research may be a good way of explaining the effects of weapon focus, but participants could have possibly been harmed, breaking guidelines.
• Anxiety


  Is a mental state of arousal that includes feelings of extreme concern and tension. This often is accompanied by physiological changes such as increased heart rate.
• Link to EWT

  In real life, EWT is often used after violent crimes causing high anxiety. Research in EWT often has no emotional impact on the participant, resulting in low validity.