Eyewitness testimony:Anxiety

Anxiety has a negative effect on recall(weapon focus)

anxiety creates physiological arousal in the body which prevents us paying attention to important cues so recall is worse

PROCEDURE - Johnson and Scott did research on how the presence of a weapon creates an anxiety causing recall of the event to be worse. The participants believed they were taking part in a lab study while seated in a waiting room. Participants in the low anxiety condition had a casual conversation in the next room and then saw a man walk past them holding pen with grease on his hands, the participants in the high anxiety condition overheard a heated argument then the sound of breaking glass a man walked out holding a knife covered in blood

FINDINGS - The participants later had to identify the man from a set of 50 photos. 49% of participants who had seen a man carrying the pen were able to identify him however only 33% of those in a high anxiety condition could identify the man with the knife. The tunnel theory of memory argues that people have enhanced memory for central events

Anxiety has a positive effect on recall

Witnessing a stressful event causes anxiety which leads to the final or flight response being triggered.

PROCEDURE - Yuille and Cutshall conducted a study of an actual shooting in a gun shop in Vancouver Canada the shop owner shot a thief dead ,there was 21 witnesses -13 took part in the study. They were interviewed 4 to 5 months after the incident accuracy was determined on the number of details reported in each account. The witnesses were also asked how stressed they had felt at the time of the incident and whether they had emotional problems since.

FINDINGS - The witnesses were very accurate in their accounts and only struggle to record the colour of items and age/height/weight estimates those who reported the highest levels of stress were more accurate about (88% compared to 75% for the less stress group)

Yerkes-Dodson law

The inverted you theory states that performance will increase with stress ,but only up to a certain point ,where it decreases drastically

Evaluation

• One limitation of the study by Johnson and Scott is that it may not have tested anxiety. The reason why participants focused on the weapon may be because they were surprised rather than scared. Kerri Pickel continued an experiment using scissors ,a handgun ,a wallet or a raw chicken as the hand items . eyewitness accuracy was significantly poor in the high usualness conditions (a raw chicken and handgun) . This suggests weapon focus affect is due to unusual nurse rather than /threat

• One strength is evidence supporting the view that an anxiety has negative effect on the accuracy of recall -the study by Valentine and Mesout supports the research on weapon focus. The researcher used an objective measure to divide participants high and low anxiety groups in the study anxiety clearly disrupt the participants ability to recall details about the actor in the London.