EWT -Anxiety

Question 1

What is anxiety?

Answer 1

Mental state of arousal that includes feelings of extreme concern and tension and often accompanied by physiological changes like increased heart rate

Question 2

What is a problem with research into EWT?

Answer 2

• EWT often used after violent crimes causes high anxiety but research into EWT has no emotional impact on participants resulting in low validity.

Question 3

What affect does anxiety have on recall?

Answer 3

High levels of anxiety reduced recall of criminals face

Question 4

What is the weapon effect?

Answer 4

Weapons cause anxiety, witnesses are distracted focusing attention on weapon rather than the criminal

Question 5

How can anxiety increase recall?

Answer 5

• State of arousal improves alertness and awareness of the situation and surroundings
• Strong emotions felt could improve memory encoding

Question 6

What is Yerks-Dodson Law of Arousal?

Answer 6

• EWT accuracy increases as anxiety raises as the witness becomes alert
• However at a point anxiety becomes too high and more stress/distractions result in lower accuracy

Question 7

AO3 Strength - Point

Answer 7

Supportive evidence which replicates the Yerks-Dodson principle

Question 8

AO3 Strength - Evidence

Answer 8

Valentine and Mesout (2009) - high anxiety subjects recalled fewer details of an individual and 17% identified the actor in a lineup, compared to 75% of low anxiety subjects

Question 9

AO3 Limitation - Point

Answer 9

Anxiety difficult to define and measure accurately so lab experiments are often too reductionist

Question 10

AO3 Limitation - Evidence

Answer 10

Anxiety made of many elements (cognitive, emotional, behavioural, physiological). Inverted U theory only considers physical arousal.