Anxiety Flashcards
What is tunnel theory?
Explains weapon focus by suggesting that our attention narrows onto a weapon, the source of our anxiety
What is the positive effect of tunnel theory?
Real-life armed robbery and shooting creates high levels of anxiety, very accurate witnesses.
What is the negative effect of anxiety on EWTs?
Weapon focus reduces accuracy of facial recognition
What causes the negative effect of anxiety?
Anxiety creates a physiological arousal which prevents us from paying attention to important cues, so recall is worse.
What causes the positive effect of EWTs?
Anxiety triggers alertness and improves memory
What is the inverted-U theory?
Recall increases as anxiety increases, but only to a point, then recall gets worse
What is the Yerkes-Dodson law?
The relationship between emotions arousal and performance represented an inverted U, in which moderate stress/anxiety, is associated with optimum performance while high or low levels of stress are associated with poor performance
What was Johnson and Scott’s procedure?
Participant in a lab setting witnessed a row in either a low anxiety condition with a greasy pen or a high anxiety condition with a bloody knife.
What were Johnson and Scott’s findings?
49% correctly identified person in pen condition vs 33% in blood knife condition
What was Yuille and Cutshall’s procedure?
Witnesses to a real-life shooting in which a thief was killed. They were interviewed 4-5 months later and their account compared with their original one
What were Yuille and Cutshall’s findings?
88% accuracy in highest stress group vs 75% accuracy in lower stress group
