A03 - Memory - Eyewitness Testimony - Anxiety Flashcards
P: A strength of the approach is that there is supportive evidence which replicate the Yerkes-Dodson principle.
E – Valentine & Mesout (2009) had subjects describe a person they saw when they walked through London’s Labyrinth of Horror.
The subjects were split into high and low anxiety based on post-event questionnaires and heart rate. The subjects with high anxiety recalled the fewest details with only 17% identifying the correct actor in a line up.
This was compared to 75% of the subjects with low anxiety.
E – the anxiety disrupted the participants recall and was based on both subjective (questionnaire) and objective (heart rate) measures.
L – this suggests that having high levels of anxiety does have a negative effect on the immediate eyewitness recall of a stressful event.
The data also fit with the Yerkes-Dodson principle.
P: A strength of the approach is that there is supportive evidence which replicate the Yerkes-Dodson principle.
E - Christianson & Hubinette (1993) interviewed 58 witnesses from real bank robberies in Sweden.
The recall accuracy was less than 75% across all witnesses.
E – the recall of bank workers (who were assumed to be at a higher level of anxiety, being directly involved) was higher than the bystanders (who were assumed to have a lower level of anxiety, being indirectly involved), and the recall was the highest in the victims (who were the most directly involved).
L – these findings from actual crimes confirm that anxiety doesn’t reduce the accuracy of recall for eyewitnesses, it could enhance it.
P: A limitation of the Johnson and Scott study is that it has questionable construct validity as the researchers may have been measuring the effect of surprise on EWT rather than the intended anxiety.
E – to test whether the weapons focus effect is a result of surprise or anxiety, Pickel (1998) conducted an experiment by creating conditions that contrasted in a hairdressing salon.
A confederate carried scissors, a handgun, a wallet and a raw chicken in the salon. The dependent variable was the accuracy of the eyewitness recall.
Eyewitness accuracy was largely poorer in the high unusualness conditions such as the gun and the chicken.
E – thus research could suggest that the weapon focus effect is due to unusualness/surprise rather than anxiety because the chicken had the same results as the gun.
L – therefore, Johnson and Scott’s findings might not tell us anything about the effect of anxiety on eyewitness testimony.
P: A limitation of Yuille and Cutshall is that as it was a field experiment the research design lacked controls and the results therefore have questionable internal validity.
E – in the study the participants might’ve discussed the event between themselves many times. Also, some participants may have read more news articles about the incident than others.
E – these factors are confounding variables that might’ve influenced the recall accuracy and not just the levels of anxiety at the time.
L – however, whilst the internal validity may be low the ecological validity is higher than lab experiments such as Johnson and Scott.
This means that the results might tell us more about the effects of anxiety on eyewitness testimony in real life crimes than lab studies.
P: A limitation of the research into anxiety on EWT is that it ignores the individual difference of emotional sensitivity.
E - Bothwell (1987) tested participants for neuroticism and labelled them as neurotic (less emotionally stable) or emotionally stable.
For the emotionally stable participants, as anxiety increased so did the levels of eyewitness testimony accuracy.
However, when the neurotic participants’ anxiety levels increase the eyewitness testimony accuracy fell.
E – Deffenbacher et al (2004) suggested that the modest effects sizes seen in studies of anxiety may be because of averaging out sensitive and non-sensitive participants.
It might be that there can’t be one universal explanation of the effect of anxiety due to individual differences.
L – this presents a limitation of taking a nomothetic approach when studying the effects of anxiety on eyewitness testimony.
P: A limitation of measuring the effects of anxiety on EWT is that anxiety is very difficult to define and measure accurately, which means that lab experiments in this area can often be too reductionist.
E – anxiety is made up of serval elements. These include emotional, physiological, cognitive and behavioural.
The inverted ‘U’ theory only considers physical arousal – this is only one aspect of a complex behaviour.
E – the inverted ‘U’ theory doesn’t explain a full holistic explanation of how anxiety might affect eyewitness testimony recall.
L – this is a severe limitation because it only offers a partial explanation.
