Anxiety

• FACTORS AFFECTING THE ACCURACY OF EWT: ANXIETY
• Another factor which affects eye witness testimony is anxiety this can have positive and negative effects. Anxiety is a unpleasant emotional condition that causes discomfort or fear. A person with anxiety may experience physiological changes such as rapid heart beat, dilated pupils, sweating. This inhibits us from paying attention
• Anxiety has a negative effect on recall- Johnson and Scott Johnson and Scott’s study investigated the negative effects of anxiety on recall due to weapon focus effect. When witnesses see a weapon it gives a sense of danger and anxiety , witnesses tend to focus on the weapon then the criminals.
• Procedure • o Participants were told they were taking part in a lab study and were asked to sit down in a waiting area o Participants were split into a low-anxiety group or a high-anxiety group (the two conditions of the independent variable) o While the participants were in the waiting area they witnessed one of the following:  The low-anxiety group overheard a casual conversation from a room and saw a man walk out with a pen and grease on his hands  The high-anxiety group overheard an argument from the room and saw a man walk out with a knife and blood on his hands o Participants were asked to identify the man from a set of photographs
• • Findings: o The low-anxiety group correctly identified the man with a mean accuracy of 49% o Accuracy dropped to 33% in the high-anxiety group o The researchers concluded that anxiety focuses attention on the weapon and away from other details of the event
• ANXIETY HAS A POSITIVE EFFECT ON RECALL- YUILLE AND CUTSHAL 1986 Yuille and cutshal investigated the positive effects of anxiety on EWT to a real crime in Vancouver Canada. A thief stole money and was shot dead by the gun shop owner. • Procedure: o Witnesses of a real-life crime shooting were asked to take part in the study (13 witnesses agreed) o Participants were interviewed four to five months following the shooting; the interviews were compared to original police interviews o Accuracy was measured by the number of matching details in each interview o Participants were also asked to rate their stress levels at the time of the incident (using a seven-point scale) and related issues, such as insomnia
• Findings: The witness’s recall was accurate as events recalled four to five months later matched original police reports Witnesses who reported high-stress at the time of the incident had the most accurate recall with 88% accuracy Low-stress witnesses had less accurate recall with 75% accuracy.The findings stress that anxiety does not have a negative effect on the recall of events or the accuracy of EWT, in fact it may enhance the accuracy of recall
• The Yerkes Dodson law is used to explain contradictory findings relating to the accuracy of EWT As some study’s show that anxiety reduces memory and some show it enhances memory. Yerkes and Dodson propesed that theirs a relationshp between arousal and performance and states that when a crime is witnessed a person becomes emotionally( anxiety) and physiologically ( fight or Flight) aroused Low levels of arousal is associated with low levels of performs such as accuracy of ewt As arousal increases performance increases up to a optimum after this level arousal increases and performance decreases