EWT: Anxiety

EWT: Anxiety

1. Anxiety is a state of emotional and pyhsical arousal

2. Anxiety has a negative effect on recall

   • Anxiety creates physiological arousal in the body, preventing us from paying attention to important cues so recall is worse
   • Weapon focus
     • Johnson & Scott (1976)
       • Participants divided into 'low-anxiety' condition and 'high-anxiety' condition
         • 'Low-anxiety' condition
           • Heard argument, man (actually confederate) came out holding a pen with grease on his hands
         • 'High-anxiety' condition
           • Heard same argument but also breaking of glass. Confederate came out holding a paper knife covered in blood
       • Results
         • Participants picked out man out of 50 photos
           • 49% of participants in 'low-anxiety' condition picked man out correctly
           • 33% of participants in 'high-anxiety' condition picked out man
       • Lab study

3. Anxiety has a positive effect on recall

   • Fight or flight response is triggered which creates alertness and improves memory
   • Yuille & Cutshall (1986)
     • Conducted a study of a real-life shooting
       • 13 out of 21 witnesses took part
         • Interviews held 4-5 months after incident and compared to original police interviews made at the time of the shooting
           • Participants who reported the highest levels of stress were most accurate

4. Deffenbacher (1983) applied Yerkes-Dodson law to EWT

   • There's an optimal level for anxiety to work in EWT

5. Evaluation

   • Weapon focus may not be relevant
     • Johnson & Scott study may test surprise rather than anxiety
   • Field studies sometimes lack control
     • Extraneous variables may be responsible for the accuracy of recall
       • Yuille & Cutshall
   • Unethical
     • Subjecting people to anxiety - psychological harm
   • Johnson & Scott used a lab study
     • There are high levels of control
     • Validity
   • Stimulated lots of research
     • So the factor of anxiety is relevant and proven to be applied usefully in some cases

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