Anxiety

• Anxiety - A state of emotional and physical arousal

  • A normal reaction to stressful situations, but it can affect the accuracy and detail of eyewitness testimony
• Anxiety has a negative effect on recall:

  Anxiety creates physiological arousal in the body which prevents us paying attention to important cues, so recall is worse
• Anxiety has a negative effect on recall (weapon focus)

  Johnson and Scott (1976)

  • One approach to studying anxiety and EWT is to look at the effect of the presence of a weapon which creates anxiety
  • This leads to a focus on the weapon, reducing a witness's recall for other details of the event
• Anxiety has a positive effect on recall:

  Witnessing a stressful event creates anxiety through physiological arousal within the body

  • The flight or fight response is triggered, increasing alertness
  • This may improve memory for the event as we become more aware of cues in the situation
• Anxiety has a positive/negative effect on recall

  Resolving the contradiction:

  Deffenbacher (1983) reviewed 21 studies on the effects of anxiety on eyewitness memory

  • Found that 10 of these studies had results that linked higher arousal levels to increased eyewitness accuracy
  • 11 of them showed the opposite
  • Suggested that the Yerkes-Dodson effect can account for this inconsistency
• Yerkes-Dodson law: (anxiety has positive/negative effect on EWT)

  When we witness a crime/accident we become emotionally and physiologically aroused

  • Lower levels of anxiety/arousal produce lower levels of recall accuracy, and then memory becomes more accurate as the level of anxiety/arousal increases
  • However, there is an optimal level of anxiety, which is the point of maximum accuracy
  • If a person (or eyewitness) experiences any more arousal, then their recall suffers a drastic decline