Weapon focus effect Flashcards
What is weapon focus effect?
In violent crimes, a person may focus on more alarming details of attack e.g weapon
How did loftus test wfe?
•Used two conditions
- one involving a weapon/ One without- both conditions heard a discussion in an adjoining room
Condition 1: a man emerged holding a pen with grease on his hand
Condition 2: The discussion was more heated and a man emerged holding a paper knife with blood
Findings of loftus wfe test
when asked to identify the man from 50 photos
Condition 1- 49% accurate
Condition 2- only 33% accurate - shows knife takes attention away from person who’s holding it
Evaluation of research
The majority of research into anxiety and ewt is lab based- may lack mundane realism
Lab research is conducted in an artificial situation - lacks ecological validity
This shows that the role of anxiety may have different implications when in real life compared to lab based research
Ethical issues on ewt
Ps of loftus research led to believe it was a real situation- lead to psychological harm
did Not provide informed consent and not aware of their right to withdraw
Loftus attempted to overcome this by fully debriefing at the end allowing them right to withdraw
strengths
Research is easily replicable as it maintained high control over extraneous variables
Deffenbacher et al 2004 - meta analysis on effect of anxiety on ewt
Considerable support for the hypothesis that high levels of stress negatively impact the accuracy of EWT
However some studies have found it may enhance their accuracy
Christianson and Hubinette
-Questioned 58 real witnesses to bank robberies
-Those who had been threatens in some way were more accurate than the onlookers
- Continued to be true even 15 months later
Relationship between arousal and accuracy
Accuracy is poor when arousal is either high or low - better under conditions of moderate arousal
One way to improve accuracy of EWT
Improve the way in which witnesses are questioned by police
