Lesson 11- anxiety and eyewitness testimony

Question 1

anxiety

Answer 1

-state of apprehension, uncertainty and fear resulting from a threatening situation, when high can often impair both physicao and psychological functioning
-several psychologists have suggested that the anxiety that occurs when witnessing a crime can prevent accurate and detailed recall of crime, presence of weapon during crime increases anxiety and could impair witnesses’ memory
-people who observe a violent crime will often pay attention to the aspect of the situation posing most threat to them because of the anxiety these weaponse cause, means witnesses who see violent crime involving a weapon can often describe weaponse in great detail but cannot recall much about the criminal themselves- weapon focus effect

Question 2

anxiety study

Answer 2

Procedure- Loftus 1979, affects of anxiety on recognising perpetrator of crime, experimental condition- arranged for participants to overhear a heated hostile argument between two people, heard furniture being overturned and broken glass, then man emerged carrying bloody letter opener, control condition- participants overheard conversation about lab experiment failure before a man with grease all over hands emerged carrying a pen, then asked to identify person they just saw from 50 photos
Findings- only 33% in experimental condition recognised photo of person, whereas 49% in control condition recognised photo, Loftus argued this was becuase people in experimental focused on bloody letter opener rather than person carrying it as letter opener posed as a threat to them

Question 3

anxiety evaluation

Answer 3

-Loftus and Burns 1982 allocated participants two conditions, one watched a violent hsort film where a boy was shot in the head, other group watched a non-violent short film of a crime, participants were less accurate in recall when they saw the short film with gun than the non-violent film
-lacks ecological validity, were waiting reception area outside lab, may have anticipated something was going to happen, which could have affected accuracy of judgements and validity of study
-violation of ethical guidelines, deceived about nature of study, not protected from psychological harm- could have been caused extreme distress, especially if they knew someone or had been involved in a knife crime
-Yuille and Cutshall 1986 investigated effect of anxiety in real life shooting in which one person was killed and another person seriously wounded, 21 witnesses originally interviewed, 13 aged between 15 and 32 agreed to take part in follow up interview five months later, witnesses were accurate in their eyewitness accounts five months later and little change was found in their testimony, witnesses avoided leading questions and those most distressed at the time gave the most accurate account, irl leading questions and anxiety do not affect accuracy of eyewitness testimony the same way they do in a lab
-individual differences in affects, some people have better recall when anxious, Christianson and Hubinette 1983 studied 110 real life eyewitnesses who had witnessed one of 22 bank robberies, some were onlookers others bank clerks directly threatened, victims were more accurate than onlookers in their description of bank robbers