EWT : Anxiety

• John and Scott - anxiety has a negative effect 


  Procedure - participants sat in a waiting room where they believed they were going to take part in a study. There were two conditions :

  1. low anxiety - participants heard a conversation and then saw a man walk through the room carrying a pen
  2. high anxiety - a heated argument was heard and a man walked through the room holding a bloody knife

  Participants were asked to pick the man from 50 photos

  Findings - 49% of participants in the low anxiety and 33% in high were able to identify the man. Weapon focus as a result of anxiety can have this effect
• Yuille and Cutshall - anxiety has a positive effect


  Procedure - a shop owner shot a thief dead. 13 witnesses agreed to participate in the study and they were interviewed 4-5 months after the incident. The information recalled was compared to the police interviews. Witnesses rated how stressed they felt at the time of the incident

  Findings - Witnesses were very accurate and there was little change after 5 months. Participants who reported the highest levels of stress were most accurate (88% compared to 75% less stressed). Anxiety does not appear to reduce the accuracy of eyewitness testimony.
• Explaining the contradictory findings

  Inverted u theory - Yerkes and Dodson argue that the relationship between performance and arousal/stress is an inverted u.

  Affects memory - Deffenbacher reviewed 21 studies of eyewitness testimony with contradictory findings on the effects of anxiety on recall. He suggested the Yerkes-Dobson effect could explain this. This was that low and high levels of anxiety produce poor recall whereas optimum levels can lead to very good recall.
• Evaluation

  One limitation is that anxiety may not be relevant to weapon focus. Johnson and Scott's participants may have focused on the weapon not because they were anxious but because they were surprised. Pickel found accuracy in identifying the 'criminal' was poorest when the object in their hand was unexpected like a raw chicken. This suggests the weapon effect is due to unusualness rather than anxiety and so tells us little about the specific effects of anxiety on recall.
• Evaluation

  One strength is supporting evidence for negative effects. Valentine and Mesout used heart rate to divide visitors to the London dungeons labyrinth into low and high anxiety groups. High anxiety participants were less accurate than low anxiety inn describing and identifying a target person. This supports the claim that anxiety has a negative effect on immediate recall of a stressful event.
• Evaluation

  One strength is supporting evidence for positive effects. Christianson and Hubinette interviewed actual witnesses to bank robberies. They found more than 75% accurate recall across all witnesses. Direct victims were even more accurate. This suggests that anxiety does not affect the accuracy of eyewitness recall and may even enhance it