Factors affecting eyewitness testimony: Anxiety

anxiety

A state of mental and physical arousal. The emotions include having worried thoughts and feelings of tension. Physical changes include an increased heart rate and sweatiness. Anxiety is a normal reaction to stressful situations

negative effects of anxiety

Anxiety leads to physiological arousal in the body which prevents us paying attention to important cues so recall is worse.

One approach looks at the effect of weapons (weapon focus effect).

positive effects of anxiety

The stress of witnessing a crime of accident creates anxiety through physiological arousal within the body. The fight-or-flight response is triggered which increases our alertness and improves our memory for the event because we become more aware of cues in the situation.

Yerkes-Dodson law (1908)

suggests that up to a point, stress improves performance but after that point, it has a bad effect on performance. Deffenbacher (1983) proposed that the effect of stress on EWT followed that law.