Eyewitness Testimony; Anxiety - Evaluation

Eyewitness Testimony; Anxiety - Evaluation

1. Ethical Issues

   • Creating anxiety in ppts is risky
   • Potentially unethical because it may subject people to psychological harm because of the purpose of the research
   • Has implications on future research
   • Individuals lose confidence in unethical research
   • Results in ppts unwillingness to participate
   • Results in DC behaviours as they believe there is a 'hidden agenda'

2. Too Simplistic

   • Weapon focus effect may not be a result of anxiety but of surprise
   • The reason people focus on the weapon may be because they are surprised by what they see rather than because they are scared
   • Pickle
     • Conducted an experiment using scissors, a hand gun, a wallet, or a raw chicken as the hand held items in a hairdressing video
     • Scissors - low anxiety & low unusualness
     • Chicken & hand gun - high anxiety & high unusualness
   • Eyewitness accuracy significantly poorer in unusual conditions
   • Suggests the weapon focus effect is due to unusualness rather than anxiety therefore tells us nothing specifically about the effects of anxiety on EWT

3. Real Life Application

   • Knowing the effects of anxiety is useful in the training of police officers
   • Especially useful in the training of those that are involved in undercover work
   • Work under highly stressful situations which is used as a factor by defence to discredit reliability of testimony
   • Strategies such as stress awareness are integrated into training