Anxiety

• Recall may be affected during initial coding of the information. This means the emotional state caused by high anxiety may negatively affect how we actually store and encode the information therefore affecting how accurately we can recall the correct information.

  
• Procedure


  1. Used two experimental conditions, one with a weapon and one without

  2. Participants asked to sit outside a room where they thought they heard a genuine discussion between two people
• Low Anxiety (no weapon)


  • Conversation was peaceful about some office equipment
  • Man emerged holding a pen and with grease on his hands
• High Anxiety (with weapon)


  • Conversation was more heated, participants heard breaking glass
  • Man emerged holding a knife covered in blood
• DV


  The number of correct identifications made of the man from 50 photographs
• Johnson & Scott (1976)

  Aim - To investigate whether high levels of anxiety will affect accuracy of recall.
• Findings: Johnson & Scott (1976) found that in the low anxiety (no weapon) condition, 49% of participants were able to accurately identify the man holding a pen from the photographs. In the high anxiety (with weapon) condition, memory recall was much less as there was only 33% accuracy from participants.

  Conclusions: This suggests the weapon may have distracted attention from the person holding it. This therefore might explain why eyewitnesses sometimes have poor recall for certain details of violent crimes involving weapons where anxiety maybe heightened.
• Strength of Research

  Research into the effect of anxiety on

  EWT is the use of controlled environments which enables researchers to control extraneous variables, use identical procedures, and make the procedure easy to replicate.
• Limitation (research)

  Lacks validity - it has

  often been criticised for being artificial i.e. using a video of a robbery is not the same as a real incident.