Lesson 11: Anxiety And Eyewitness Testimony

Question 1

What is anxiety?

Answer 1

A state of apprehension, uncertainty, and fear from a threatening situation

Question 2

How does anxiety affect testimony?

Answer 2

• impairs physical and psychological functioning
• when witnessing a crime, anxiety can prevent accurate and detailed recall.
• when there is a weapon, anxiety increases, and as the weapon poses the greatest threat, they will pay attention to it instead of the perpetrator
• this is called weapon focus effect

Question 3

What was the procedure?

Answer 3

• Loftus arranged for participants to overhear a hostile/heated argument between two people in an experimental condition
• The participant would hear furniture being overturned and broken glass
• A man would emerge carrying a letter opener covered with blood
• In the control condition, participants heard a convo between 2 people about a lab equipment failure before a man emerged with grease on his hands carrying a pen
• Participants were asked to identify the person they had seen from 50 photos

Question 4

What were the findings?

Answer 4

• 33% of participants in the bloody letter opener condition recognised the person
• 49% of participants in the control condition recognised the person carrying the pen

This is because people in the former conditioned focused on the letter opener because it could have posed a threat to them

Question 5

Evaluation

Answer 5

+ Supported by other studies: Loftus and Burns allocated participants into 2 conditions, a video where a boy was shot in the head and a non-violent video of crime. Participants were less accurate in recall with the violent crime

• Lacking ecological validity: they waited in the waiting room, anticipating something, so affecting their accuracy on their judgements and lowering validity
• Violating ethical guidelines: participants were deceived, not protected from psychological harm, under distress and stress
• A real life incident occurred where a person was shot and another was seriously wounded. 21 witnesses were interviewed by police and 13 decided to do a follow up interview 5 months after. They were accurate in their accounts. The witnesses avoided leading questions, and the ones who were the most distressed gave the most accurate testimonies
• Participant variables. Some people have better recall when they are anxious. A study was conducted on 110 real life witnesses in a bank robbery. Victims who were threatened gave more accurate accounts than onlookers.