Memory - Eyewitness Testimony - Anxiety Flashcards
What is anxiety?
An unpleasant emotional state where we fear something bad will happen.
This typically happens when people are in stressful situations.
It is accompanied with physiological arousal which includes: an increased heart rate and shallow breathing.
Therefore, much of the research in eyewitness testimony is now focused on the effects of arousal.
What are 2 aspects of anxiety?
The positive effect and the negative effect.
Why might anxiety have a negative effect on recall?
Anxiety creates physiological arousal in the body which prevents people from paying attention to important cues. Therefore, recall is worse.
What does ‘weapon focus’ mean?
An approach to studying eyewitness testimony and anxiety is to look at the effect of weapons on accuracy of the recall of the witness.
The weapons researched are ones that create anxiety.
Explain the procedure, findings and conclusions of Johnson & Scott’s (1976) study on the effects of anxiety on EWT.
Hypothesis – Anxiety has a negative effect on eyewitness testimony.
Procedure – Participants were led to believe they were waiting to take part in a study but as they were waiting, they heard an argument in the next room.
In the low anxiety condition a man walked through the waiting room carrying a pen with his hands covered in grease.
In the high anxiety condition the argument was accompanied with a breaking glass sound. The man walked out of the room holding a paper knife covered in blood.
Findings – Participants were given a set of 50 photos to identify the man.
49% of the low anxiety condition identified him correctly.
33% of the high anxiety condition identified him correctly.
Conclusion: The tunnel theory of memory argues that a witness’ attention narrows to focus on a weapon as it’s a source of anxiety.
What is the tunnel theory of memory?
In a stressful situation, our attention narrows to focus on one part of the situation. It is as if we have tunnel vision.
Why might anxiety have a positive effect on recall?
There is an argument that anxiety creates a physiological arousal in the body (high anxiety) which triggers the response of fight or flight, and it increases alertness.
Therefore, this improves the accuracy of eyewitness testimony.
Explain the procedure, findings and conclusions of Yuille & Cutshall’s (1986) study on the effects of anxiety on EWT.
Hypothesis – Anxiety has a positive effect on eyewitness testimony.
Procedure – A real gun shooting took place in a gun shop in Canada where the shop owner shot a thief dead.
There were 21 total witnesses and 13 took part in the study. After 4-5 months after the original incident interviews took place and were compared with the original police interviews made at the time of the shootings.
The accuracy was determined by the number of correct details reported in each interview. The participants also had to rate how stressed they felt at the time on a 7-point scale to assess their anxiety levels at the time.
Findings - Participants were very accurate in their accounts and after 5 months there was little change in the eyewitness testimony.
Participants who reported the highest stress levels were the most accurate in their recall.
This was 88% accuracy compared to the less stressed group’s 75%.
Conclusion – This suggests that anxiety downer have a detrimental effect on the accuracy of eyewitness testimony in a real-world circumstance. Perhaps it will be enhanced.
Explain the Yerkes-Dodson law, and how it applies to anxiety?
Having a low performance level and low stimulation creates a bored and tired effect.
Having a high-performance level with a high stimulation creates a focused and engaged effect.
Having a low performance level and high stimulation level creates a stressed and restless effect.
This means anxiety can have both positive and negative effects on someone’s ability to recall accurately.
Eyewitness testimony: performance will increase with stress, but only to a certain point, where it decreases rapidly.
What is the shape of this sort of relationship between 2 variables called?
An inverted U relationship.
What was the original research conducted by Yerkes-Dodson?
The original research by Yerkes and Dodson was based on rats in mazes. There was one correct way through a maze and the wrong routes gave the rats electric shocks.
They looked for optimum punishment where the rats learned quickest. As voltage increased, the learning increased.
However, beyond a certain voltage the performance went down as rats slowed down, retreated and froze rather than risk the shocks. They started to forget what was dangerous and what was safe.
This showed how increasing stress only motivates until the point at which stress becomes the increasing Without some motivating tension we have no reason to act.
In this way, stress could be viewed as a good thing. We are built to be motivated by stress, so this typically happens.
However too much stress results can cause performance to decline, sometimes sharply if cognitive or nervous breakdown is triggered.
A downturn can be caused by excessive attention to a task so much so that extra important factors get missed.
What evidence is there to support the application of the Yerkes-Dodson law to the role of anxiety on memory recall?
Deffenbacher et al. (1983):
-Reviewed 21 studies of eyewitness testimony and noted the contradictory findings on the effects of anxiety, but which fit with the Yerke-Dodson principle.
-When a crime is witnessed, we become emotionally and physiologically aroused.
-This manifests as both flight or fight response and anxiety.
-Recall is optimal when the level of arousal/anxiety is optimal.
-Outside of this, recall is reduced.
