effect of anxiety on EWT accuracy

Define anxiety

Unpleasant emotional state with increased physiological and emotional arousal

• Fight or flight physical effects

Draw the Yerkes-Dodson Effect

Anxiety has been shown to reduce and increase accuracy

How can anxiety have a negative effect in accuracy?

• well practised tasks are more resistant to stress

• Novel or challenging tasks are more negatively affected

How does the weapon focus effect reduce EWT accuracy?

P: attention is diverted from other feature to weapon and reduces accuracy of identification

E:

• Ps sat on a waiting room and hear an argument

• Then see a man run out with either a grease covered pen (low anxiety) or a bloody knife (high anxiety)

• Ps asked to identify man from a set of photographs

T: idea supported - 49% identified the pen man vs 33% correctly identified the knife man

What further evidence of weapon focus effect refutes EWT accuracy?

P: anxiety does focus attention on central features of a crime (e.g weapon)

E:

• EW’s eye movements were monitored

• Found hat the pre scene of a weapon caused attention to be physical drawn

What evidence is there that challenges the weapon focus effect in support of EWT accuracy?

E:

• Ps viewed stimuli of an armed man robbing with a phone or gun in hand

• Ps eye movements recorded and saw observers predominately focused attention on people and less on held object

T:

• Presence of a weapon didn’t cause Ps to recall less about perpetrators appearance

• Therefore at odds with the attention shift explanation of the weapon focus effect

How can surprise be a limitation to anxiety affecting EWT accuracy?

P: reduced accuracy of identification could be due to surprise than anxiety

E:

• Ps watched a thief enter a hairdressers with scissors, handgun, wallet or whole chicken

• Identification was least accurate in the high surprise conditions rather than high threat

T: reduced accuracy could be due to the unusualness of what us recalled , than higher arousal levels

How can anxiety have a positive effect on the accuracy of EWT?

P: evidence of enhanced recall when they questioned real witnesses to Swish bank robberies

E:

• witnesses were either bank tellers or customers and interviewed 4-15 months post robberies

• Found all witnesses showed generally good memories for details of the robbery itself (75% accuracy)

• Most anxious witnesses had best recall

T:

• generally shows that anxiety doesn’t reduce accuracy of recall

• Concluded that memory for negative emotional events is better than neutral events

• Has good ecological validity - irl scenario

How can individual differences affect anxiety and EWT accuracy? (AO3)

P: anxiety is dependent on individuals emotional sensitivity

E:

• Ps tested for personality characteristics - labelled neurotic or stable

• Found stable Ps showed rising levels of accuracy as stress increased - opposite occurred for neurotic Ps

T: suggests that individual differences may indeed play an important role in EWT accuracy