EWT: anxiety

• Pickel (1998)


  Used scissors, handgun, wallet and raw chicken as hand-held items in a hairdressing salon
• EWT accuracy was poorer for high unusualness (chicken and handgun)
• Participants may focus on a weapon


  Because they are surprised at what they see rather than because they are scared
• The focus effect is due to unusualness rather than anxiety/threat
• The study by Pickel (1998) tells us nothing specifically about the effects of anxiety on EWT
• Anxiety has a negative effect
• Study 1: Johnson and Scott (1976)


  1. Participants sat in a waiting room believing they were going to take part in a lab study

  2. Each participant heard an argument in the next room

  3. Low-anxiety condition: a man with grease on his hands walked through the waiting room

  4. High-anxiety condition: a man covered in blood walked through the waiting room

  5. Participants were later asked to pick the man from a set of 50 photographs
• Tunnel theory of memory

  A witness's attention is on the weapon (weapon focus), because it is a source of danger and anxiety
• Anxiety has a positive effect
• Study 2: Vuille and Cutshall (1986)


  1. In a real-life crime a gun-shop owner shot a thief dead. There were 21 witnesses, 13 agreed to participate in the study

  2. Participants were interviewed 4-5 months after the incident

  3. Accounts were compared to the police interviews at the time of the shooting

  4. Witnesses rated how stressed they felt at the time of the incident
• Inverted U theory


  The relationship between performance and arousal/stress is curvilinear rather than linear
• Lower levels of anxiety

  Produce lower levels of recall accuracy
• Recall accuracy


  Increases with anxiety up to an optimal point, then a drastic decline in accuracy is seen when an eyewitness experiences more anxiety than the optimal point
• Pickel (1998) used scissors, handgun, wallet and raw chicken as hand-held items in a hairdressing salon
• EWT accuracy was poorer for high unusualness (chicken and handgun)
• The focus effect is due to participants being surprised at what they see rather than because they are scared
• Real-life witnesses are interviewed sometime after the event, many things happen to them in the meantime that researchers cannot control
• Real-life witnesses discuss the event with others, read or view accounts in the media, the police interview may influence their memory (post-event discussions)
• The research is not measuring the accuracy of EWT and this reduces the validity of research investigating the effects of anxiety