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Factor affecting EWT- anxiety
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- 1Anxietystate of emotional and physical arousal
Emotions include - increased heart rate and sweatiness (anxiety is a normal reaction to stressful situations, BUT CAN AFFECT ACCURACY AND DETAIL OF EWT) - 2most lab experiments show that high levels of anxiety reduce accuracy of EWTfits in with general law in psychology - very high levels of arousal (such as anxiety) reduce performance on all kinds of tasks (Yerkes Dodson law)
- 3Yerkes Dodson Law suggests that...suggest that moderate anxiety is associated with better recall than high or very law anxiety)
- 4weapon focus...witness's attention is typically focussed on any weapon used in an incident (result of understandable fear for their own safety)
MEANS - there is a corresponding lack of attentions (focus ) paid to the appearance of the perpetrator and the person therefore doesn't process the info
(WEAPON FOCUS REDUCES ABILITY OF THE WITNESS TO PROVIDE ACCURATE IDENTIFICATION) - 5ANXIETY (johnson and scott)AIM- to investigate the presence of a weapon (which leads to anxiety) affects the accuracy of EWT
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METHOD- p asked to sit in a waiting room where they heard an argument in an adjoining room , saw a man running through the room carrying either a pen covered in grease (low anxiety condition) or a knife covered in blood (high anxiety 'weapon focus' condition) . The p asked to identify the man from a set of photographs
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RESULTS - findings supported idea of weapon focus effect (mean accuracy was 49% in identifying man in the pen condition compared with 33% in the knife condition) . Loftus et al showed that anxiety does focus attention on central features of a crime (e.g the weapon)
- r monitored EW's eye movements and found that the presence of a weapon caused attention towards the weapon taking it away from other things such as person's face
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CONCLUSION - weapon focus leads to less accurate recall of the person committing the crime because of anxiety - 6EVALUATION (+) lab experimentP- lab experiment , establishes cause and effect
E=- lab experiement , high control over extraneous v- confident IV ( presence/absence of a weapon) affected DV (recall of the person committing the crime)
E- strength because - results of study unlikely to be affected by confounding v, confident that the conclusion about anxiety (weapon focus) reducing accuracy of EWT has internal val. increases val of the claim that anxiety does reduce the accuracy of EWT - 7(-) individual differenceR- lim into anxiety is that they have been affected by extraneous v
E- has been suggested that 1 key extraneous v is emotional sensitivity . (study by bothwell - p tested for personality characteristics and were labelled as either neurotic (tend to become anxious quickly) or stable ( less emotionally sensitive). it was found that the stable p showed rising levels of accuracy as stress levels increased . the opposite was true for neurotics - their accuracy decreased as stress increased
E- suggest that individual differences may indeed play a more important role in accuracy of EWT - 8(+) practical applicationP- strength of research into anxiety and EWT - has practical application
E- e.g from the research -now understand that EWT is not always accurate and that anxiety can distort EWT and make it less accurate. police will need to be cautious when interviewing anxious witnesses and crimes that involve weapons
E- strength of research - has made an important contribution to our understanding of the issue of using EWT in as evidence in criminal investigations in real life - 9study 2 - CONTRADICTORY STUDY FOR LEADING QUESTIONSAIM- investigate effect of anxiety on accuracy of EWT in a real life shooting , (one person was killed and another person seriously wounded)
METHOD- 21 witnesses originally interviewed by investigating police and 13 witnesses (15-32 yrs) agreed to take part in Yuille and Cutshall follow up research interview , 4-5 months later
in both sets of interviews (police and research), verbatim (word for word) accounts of the incident were obtained and follow up questions asked in order to clarify points of detail. R in the follow up study also asked 2 misleading questions
RESULTS - found 13 witnesses who took part in follow up interview were accurate in their EW's accounts 5 months later and little change found in their testimonies
- wording of misleading questions had no effect , those who were most deeply distressed by the incident (e.g suffered nightmares) were the most accurate of the witnesses (88% compared to 75% for less stressed group)
CONCLUSION - 10(-) yuille and cuthall contradict effects of misleading info and anxiety on EWTP- research contradicts that leading questions / anxiety reduces accuracy of EWT
E- interviewed 13 witnesses to an armed robbery in canada. Included 2 misleading questions in their interviews and found that these questions had no effect on accuracy of the EWT
E- lim of research into leading questions / anxiety - research demonstrated that leading questions/ anxiety doesn't reduce accuracy of EWT in real life , findings of studies which contradicts this finding may be valid - 11HOWEVER - yuille and Cutshall is a case study with a samll sample sizeP- low pop val
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E- sample consists of 13 witnesses to an armed robbery in canada - small sample size, p may not be representative of the rest of the pop . small amount of data to draw conclusions from
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E- lim of research - may be difficult to generalise, the findings about leading questions / EWT to the rest of the pop (low external val) . study therefore is weak evidence to contradict the findings of other research such as Loftus and palmer (leading questions ) and Loftus (anxiety)
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- A level Psychology (memory) Karteikarten am Factor affecting EWT- anxiety, erstellt von Ellaine Wahome am 31/01/2022.
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- Ellaine Wahome
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