Anxiety

• Johnson and Scott found the effects of anxiety on eye witness testimony using the 'weapon effect'.
• Participants were waiting in a 'waiting' room where they thought the experiment did not happen yet.
• In condition 1 - pps witnessed a friendly discussion on a machine failure and a man left the room covered in grease holding a pen.
• In condition 2 - pps heard shouting and furniture being turned over and then saw a man exit holding a letter opener.
• All the pps were then asked to identify the man from 50 photos.
• In condition 1 - 49 % of pps correctly identified the man from the photos.

  In condition 2 - 33 % of pps correctly identified the man from the photos.
• Johnson and Scott concluded that the 'weapon effect' impacts anxiety which decreases the accuracy of eyewitness testimony due to the fact those in the 'weapon effect' condition didn't take in peripheral information.
• AO3

  :( - Yuille and Cutshall

  Studied real witnesses to a real crime of a gun shop owner who shot a thief dead.

  The witnesses were reinterviewed 5 months after the original event - only 13 witnesses agreed.

  Found that those closest to the gun had 88 % accuracy after 5 months and those further away had 75 % accuracy.

  This contradicts Johnson and Scott stating that increased anxiety actually increases the accuracy of EWT.

  Thus reducing the validity of the 'weapon effect'.
• AO3

  :( - Pickel

  Pickel stated that Johnson and Scott's results were down to the unusuality of the situation rather than anxiety.

  They set up robberies at hair dressers and people were either threatened with a toy gun or a chicken breast (this also increases ecological validity as its done in a real life scenario).

  They found recall was worse with the raw chicken breast due to the unusual situation which provided shock value.

  This reduces the validity of Johnson and Scott by providing an alternative explanation to their results.
• AO3

  :( - Christiansen and Hubinette

  Interviewed real witnesses of a bank robbery.

  They interviewed those directly affected and those who were bystanders and found that those directly affected had better recall of the robbery.

  This refutes Johnson and Scott's theory that 'weapon effect' and anxiety affect EWT and it completely contradicts this and this decreases the validity.
• AO3

  :/ - Methodology

  The experiment took place in a lab and so there is high control of extraneous variables (high internal validity)

  But, the theory may lack ecological validity as anxiety would be hard to accurately represent outside of a real life scenario.
• AO3

  :( - Demand characteristics

  The participants were already aware they were taking part in an experiment so were expecting something and therefore may have been reacting to demand characteristics.

  This casts doubt on whether or not the theory has validity because were they measuring anxiety's effects or were they measuring the effects of demand characteristics.