Weapon Focus Summary Flashcards
Weapon Focus
What is weapon Focus
Weapon Focus is the concentration of a crime witness focusing onto a weapon
and therefore there is very little concentration on the offender or the memory of the Crime itself
due to concentrating on the weapon (i.e gun(Loftus believes it’s evolution)) rather than the offender (attention narrowing)
Taylor 1982: “no attention available for seeing other things at the scene” due to weapon Focus
Weapon Focus
Stress/threat in weapon Focus
According to the yerkes Dodson law
Increased arousal (stress) = increased memory performance
up to a certain point called the optimum
then after this memory performance decreases
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It is suggested that the presence of a weapon creates arousal above the optimum therefore meaning that people have poorer memory performance
For example when a weapons such as a Knife is pointed at a witness they are more likely to remember details of the weapon/ hands than the face of the offender
Weapon Focus
Attention / unusualness in weapon Focus
Attention on the weapon at the expense of other details as you spend more time looking at the weapon than it other peripheral details such as the offenders face
Essentially memories aren’t formed or are at least considerably weaker when not paying attention
there are two reasons for this:
one the Threat of the weapon
and two the unusualness of the weapon in the context of the situation
for example a police officer with a taser Is Not Unusual
whereas a soldier with a chicken is
Pickel 1996
Found that only unusualeness impacted memory as it captures the attention for example broccoli in a joust
Weapon Focus
Evidence to support
Pickel 1998 support weapons Focus
Participants watched a 2-minute video of men walking into a hair salon and getting money from the receptionist
There were five groups
in each group the man was holding something different including:
Nothing, scissors, gun, wallet, and the chicken
10 min later
They asked participants to describe the receptionist as it was a control because they haven’t seen the object yet
and then describe the man what he was doing and identify him from the lineup
They found low threat accuracy and high threat accuracy rated objects had no difference
but high unusual objects has high accuracy
therefore supporting the fact that the unusualness of an object in a situation creates weapon Focus and therefore this supports the theory
Weapon Focus
How good is the research
poor Research pickel 1998 low generalizability
Ethnocentric and education
The study had low generalizability this is due to this sample of 1230 American students being ethnocentric (cant apply the studys support in weapon focus unusualness to other cultures) and students may be experienced an identifying people in the highly threatening object conditions (cant appply it to other lvls of education)
Therefore making this study not generalizable to the general population and therefore it is poor research to support weapon Focus
Weapon Focus
Loftus and Burns 1982 supports weapon Focus evidence
two conditions
in one condition ppts watches short film with a boy with a gun who was shot in the head
The other group watched a non-violent crime video then they were asked to account
Less of the account was real in the violent film within the non-violent film
This supports weapon Focus as it demonstrates anxiety and stressful situations caused by a weapon leads to inaccurate recall their full supporting weapons Focus Theory
Weapon Focus
How good is the research
poor
Loftus and Burns 1982
low eco validity
Loftus and burns 1982 has low ecological validity
this is due to watching a violent short film wouldnt have simulatedbthe level of emotional response/ involvment as witnessing a real murder
meaning that the study and its results that anxiety + weapons reduces recall accuracy isnt applicable to real life as it dosnt simulate the same emotional effect and therefore response as real murder
giving it low ecological valodity
meaning it is poor research to support weapons focus theory
Weapon Focus
evidence against
Chrisitanson and hubinette 1993
banks
Christianson ans Hubinette 1993 oppose Weapon focus
their study involved 110 witnesses who were questioned as between them they had seen 22 real bank robberies
some were bamk workers (victims)
some were onlookers
victims showed more accurate recall than onlookers even 15 months after the event
therefore showing that in a real setting, anxiety didn’t make recall less accurate, even with weapons (sometimes it increased recall accuracy!)
meaning that recall with stress improoves in real life but is poor in labs
therefore the study opposes Weapons focus
as the witnesses had accurate recall despite stess, anxiety and weapons
Weapon Focus
Good research
Christianson and Hubinette 1993
high ecological validity
Christianson and Hubinette 1993
high ecological validity due to witnesses being of real life bank robberies, occuring in real life and therefore are likley to occur in real life (as they did)
meaning they were extreemly accurate and representitive of real life
meaning the study had high ecological validity
making Christianson and Hubinette 1993 good research to oppose weapons focus
Weapon Focus
comparison to Post event information theory (weapons focus better)
research on weapons focus includes lots of real life accounts of weapons focus in action such as Christianson and Hubinette 1993 (opposed it)
while a lot of reseach on PEI is low in ecological validity, with lab research such as Gabbert et al (2003) which had low ecologiclal validity due to videos of a crime not having the same emotional impact as real life possibly effecting the recall of the event, meaning it has low ecological validity and is poor research to support EWI
therefore weapons focus has better research into it, both supporting and opposing, than post event information, making it a better explenation of impared recall in EWT
Weapon Focus
limitations (what it can explain)
while it can explain how anxiety/stress affects memory in weapons focus
it dosnt explain why in real life examples
recall was accurate
such as in Christianson and Hubinette 1993
despite being well over the optimum as it was in a real life violent situaltion
but lab experements such as loftus and burns 1982 found that recall in anxiety inducing situations was innacuarate
therefore suggestion the theory needs more developing and clarification to resolve this limitation /contridiction that anxiety and stress past the optimum was found to be poth accurate and innacurate
so the theory can explain why this occured
(Christianson and Hubinette suggested it was due to real life cases vs lab study but this is only a suggestion not the theory explaining it itself)
Weapon Focus
conclusion and aplication to ed and unusualness advantage by crim
In conclusion the theory looks at reasons such as anxiety, attention and unusualness / threat of the weapon to explain weapon Focus
which is the concept during a crime on a weapon of present a Witnesses tension is focused on the weapon rather than all other peripheral details
Understand be supported by many studies such as pickel 1998
Ap
An application of this theory is that people can be given training and education on focusing on the faces of offenders which meant can be used in negate the weapons affects and to have more accurate memories and a higher chance of identifying the offender during a real crime
another application is this could be used the advantage of offenders for trying to get over crime as they could use an unusual looking weapons such as a hot pink gun to do crime therefore due to the highly unusualness weapon the people were focus on the weapon rather than the criminal
