Anxiety

• Eyewitness testimony is the ability of people to remember the details of events, such as accidents and crimes, which they have witnessed. The accuracy of EWT can be affected by factors such as misleading information and anxiety.
• Anxiety is a state of emotional and physical arousal. The emotions include having worried thoughts and feelings of tension. Physical changes include sweating and an increased heart rate.
• Anxiety has a negative effect on recall-

  Procedure: Johnson & Scott led ppts to believe they were taking part in a lab study. While seated in a waiting room, the low-anxiety group heard a casual conversation in the next room and then saw a man exit the room with a pen and grease on his hands. The high-anxiety group heard a heated conversation and smashing glass, they saw a man leave the room holding a bloody knife.
• Anxiety has a negative effect on recall-

  Findings & conclusion: ppts later picked out the man from a set of 50 photos. 49% from the low-anxiety group identified him whereas only 33% from the high-anxiety group could. The tunnel theory of memory argues that people have enhanced memory for central events. Weapon focus as a result of anxiety can have this effect.
• Anxiety has a positive effect on recall-

  Procedure: Yuille & Cutshall conducted a study on a real-life shooting in a gun shop in Canada. The shop owner shot a thief dead. Out of 21 witnesses- 13 took part in the study. They were interviewed 4-5 months after the shooting & these interviews were compared with the original police statements. Accuracy was determined by the number of details reported in each account. Ppts were also asked to rate how stressed they were during the incident and whether they had any emotional problems since the event.
• Anxiety has a positive effect on recall-

  Findings & conclusion: The witnesses were very accurate in their accounts & there was little change in the amount they recalled. Those who reported the highest amount of stress had the most accurate recall of 88% compared to 75% for those who were less stressed. This suggests that anxiety doesn't have a detrimental effect on the accuracy of EWT and may even advance it.
• Evaluation of negative effect-

  1. criticism of Johnson and Scott is that numerous ethical guidelines were broken. The participants were deceived about the nature of the experiment and not protected from harm. Johnson and Scott exposed some of the participants to a man holding a bloodied knife, which could have caused extreme feelings of anxiety. This is an issue as these participants may have left the experiment feeling exceptionally stressed and anxious, especially if they, or someone they knew, had been involved in knife crime.
• Evaluation of negative effect-

  1. Johnson and Scott’s research has been criticised for lacking ecological validity. Although the participants were waiting in the reception area outside the laboratory, they may have anticipated that something was going to happen, which could have affected the accuracy of their judgements. Furthermore, the results from real life case studies refute the findings and suggest that their results do not represent real-life cases of extreme anxiety.
• Evaluation of positive effect-

  1. Yuille & Cutshall used real-life EWs which means that their research is high in ecological validity
• Evaluation of positive effect-

  1. Yuille & Cutshall used a (very) small sample of participants who had witnessed a one-off event which means that their research cannot be replicated plus it is difficult to generalise the findings