8) Eyewitness Testimony- Anxiety

Define anxiety?

An intense state of emotional and/or physical arousal.

Name researchers who investigated the effect of anxiety on eye witness testimony?

Johnson and Scott

Describe research by Johnson and Scott into the effect of anxiety on EWT?

NEGATIVE IMPACT ON RECALL:

Participants believed that they were taking part in a lab study and were in a waiting room.

The Two conditions:

1. Participants heard a heated argument in the next room followed by glass smashing. Then, a man walked out the room with a bloody knife.

2. Participants heard a casual conversation in the next room. Then they saw a man walk out with a leaking pen.

Participants were given 50 photos and asked to identify the man.

• Recall was worse in the high anxiety condition (33%) compared to the low anxiety condition (49%).

Describe the tunnel theory of memory?

Suggests that people have enhanced memory for central events.

Describe the weapon focus effect?

The weapon focus effect is where people only pay attention to the weapon itself so recall accuracy decreases.

Name researchers who investigated the positive effects of anxiety on EWT?

Yuille and Cutshall

Outline research by Yuille and Cutshall into the effectiveness of anxiety on EWT?

YUILLE AND CUTSHALL:

Investigated the effect of anxiety into a real life shooting, in which one person was killed and another person was seriously wounded.

• 21 witnesses were originally interviewed by investigating police and 13 witnesses, aged between 15-32 agreed to take part in Yuille and Cutshall’s follow up research interview 4-5 months later- this was then compared to the original statement.

• The witnesses were also asked how stressed they felt at the time, and whether they had experienced any emotional problems since the event.

  • It was found that eyewitness accounts were accurate five months later.

  • It was also found that those who reported the highest levels of stress were the most accurate (88%) compared to the less stressed group (75%).

These results suggest that anxiety does not have a detrimental effect on EWT.

Describe an explanation for findings by Yuille and Cutshall?

Witnessing a stressful event creates anxiety through physiological arousal in the body.

• Thus, the fight or flight response is triggered.

• Therefore, alertness increases and recall accuracy improves.

Describe the yerkes-dodson law?

Investigates the relationship between emotional arousal and performance.

DEFFENBACHER:

Noted the contradictory findings and applied this to EWT research.

• Lower levels of anxiety produce lower levels of recall accuracy.

• However, levels of accuracy increase with anxiety up to a certain point.

Evaluate research into anxiety and eye witness testimony?

LIMITATION: IT MAY NOT BE ABOUT ANXIETY

PICKEL:

Used scissors, a handgun, a wallet or raw chicken as hand held items in a hairdressing salon video.

• Eye witness accuracy was significantly poorer in the high unusualness conditions (chicken and handgun) compared to the threatening conditions.

Suggests that the weapon focus effect is due to unusualness rather than anxiety/threat.

Therefore, it tells us nothing specific about the effects of anxiety on EWT.

STRENGTH: SUPPORT FOR NEGATIVE EFFECTS

VALENTINE AND MESOUT:

Used heart rate to divide participants into high and low anxiety groups.

• They found that anxiety clearly disrupted a participants ability to recall details about an actor in the labyrinth of horror.

This suggests that a high level of anxiety does have a negative effect on immediate eye witness recall of a stressful event.

LIMITATION: ETHICAL ISSUES WITH RESEARCH

Johnson and Scotts participants were deceived as they thought they had been invited to an interview.

• Furthermore, some were exposed to a man holding a bloody knife.

  • This may have been incredibly stressful, anxiety inducing and traumatic.

  • Particularly for those who had themselves been involved with knife crime.

STRENGTH: SUPPORT FOR POSITIVE EFFECTS

CHRISTIAN AND HUBINETTE:

They interviewed 58 witnesses to bank robberies in Sweden.

Some were directly involved (employees) while some were indirectly involved.

It is assumed that those who were directly involved had more anxiety.

• Recall was 75% accurate across all witnesses, and it went up for this who were directly involved.

Thus, provides support.

COUNTERPOINT:

On the other hand, the interviews did take place 4-15 months after the event, and the researchers had not controlled what happened in that time.

Therefore, they had not controlled all possible confounding variables

Thus, making it have a lower internal validity.