Factors Affecting Eyewitness Testimony: Anxiety Flashcards
(21 cards)
What is anxiety?
Mind and body’s reaction to usually stressful, dangerous, or unfamiliar situations
Sense of uneasiness, distress, or dread
What are negative effects of anxiety?
Prevents attention to cues in the environment, negative effect on recall
Who studied negative effects of anxiety?
Johnson and Scott and the weapons focus effect (weapon present while crime taking place, more likely to focus on weapon)
What was the procedure of Johnson and Scott?
Participants in a waiting room hearing an argument in the next room. Tested recall in 2 different conditions.
Low anxiety condition: man walks out with pen and greasy hands
High anxiety condition: breaking glass and a man walks thru with knife covered in blood
What was the results of Johnson and Scott?
Low anxiety group had better recall with 49% of low anxiety group correctly identified the man and 33% of high anxiety group correctly identified the man
What was the limitation of Johnson and Scotts study?
Might test surprise rather than anxiety as Pickel did the same experiment except used scissors, handgun, wallet and raw chicken
Raw chicken caused lowest recall stores, more surprising therefore harder to pay attention to cues
What are positive effects of anxiety?
Creates physiological arousal, triggers fight or flight response, increases alertness, improves memory
Who looked into positive effects of anxiety?
Yuille and Cutshall conducted a field experiment with a real situation (shop owner shot a thief and killed him)
What was the procedure of Yuille and Cutshall’s study?
Interviewed 13 witnesses between 4-5 months after actual event testing their accuracy with a 7-point scale
Accuracy = number of details reported
Asked if they had any emotional problems since the event
What were the results of Yuille and Cutshall’s study?
Little change in accuracy from initial statements, details aout colours, height, weight and age less accurate.
Those with higher stress levels: 88% accuracy
Those with lower stress levels: 75% accuracy
What’s a limitation of their use of field experiments?
Researchers interview participants a long time after the event, lots happened since then: possibly retroactive or proactive interference or PED
May be extraneous variables that affect recall
What does the Yerkes-Dodson Law (1908) describe?
The relationship between arousal and performance, indicating an optimal level of arousal for peak performance
Who applied Yerkes-Dodson’s law?
Deffenbacher applied it to EWT and found there was a point of maximum accuracy.
Too little anxiety, recall is low, too much anxiety recall declines.
What’s a limitation of Yerkes Dodson’s law?
Anxiety difficult to define, cant be measured accurately. Involves different processes like cognitive, behavioural etc
Yerkes-Dodson only links to physical arousal of anxiety
What’s the procedure of labyrinth of horror?
Valentine and Mescout gave visitors to london dungeon heart monitiors to measure anxiety, split into 2 groups: high and low anxiety
What methodology was used in the ‘Labyrinth of Horror’ study by Valentine and Mescout
Quasi-experiment
What is a quasi-experiment?
Not a true experiment as it lacks complete control and manipulation over variables, uses existing changes/variables
What is a limitation of quasi-experiments?
Difficulty establishing a cause-and-effect relationship due to non-manipulated pre-existing variables
What were the results of the ‘Labyrinth of Horror’ study regarding memory recall?
Low anxiety group identified the person 75% of the time; high anxiety group identified the person 17% of the time
What ethical issues are associated with lab studies?
Risk of causing psychological harm
What are demand characteristics in psychological studies?
Participants may guess the experiment’s purpose and alter their behavior accordingly
