Flashcards
Eyewitness testimony: Anxiety
Cards in this deck (5)
- 1Johnson and Scott (1976) Anxiety has a negative effectProcedure: Participants sat in a waiting room believing they were going to take part in a lab study. There was 2 conditions. Condition 1: (Low anxiety) After the participants heard an argument a man walked through the waiting room with a pen and grease on his hands. Condition 2 (high anxiety): After hearing the argument and glass smash a man walked through the waiting room holding a paper knife covered in blood.
All participants was then asked to identify the man from a set of 50
Findings: 49% for the lower anxiety condition and only 33% for the high anxiety condition. - 2Yuille and Cutshall (1986) Anxiety has a positive effectProcedure: In a real life crime a gun shop owner shot a thief dead, there were 21 witnesses and 13 agreed to take part in the study, the study happened 4-5 months after the crime and the accounts were compared to the police interviews at the time of the shooting. Witnesses also rated how stress they were at the time of the crime Findings: Witnesses was very accurate after 5 months however some details were less accurate e.g. colours of items. Participants who reported the highest levels of stress was the most accurate.
- 3Yerkes and Dodson (1908) argue that the relationship between performance and stress is linear. Deffenbacher (1983) found that lower levels of anxiety did produce lower levels of accurate recall. Recall accuracy increases up to an optimal point. A decline is seen when the person experiences more than the optimal point.Johnson and Scott's study may test surprise not anxiety: Participants may have focused on the weapon as they are surprised on what the are seeing. Pickel (1998) used scissors, handgun, wallet and raw chicken in a hair salon. EWT accuracy was poorer on the unusualness of items. Showing that the weapon focus effect is due to the accuracy of recall and not the anxiety, therefore it tells us nothing about EWT.
- 4A limitation of field studies is they lack a control of variables. Real life witness was interviewed 5 months after the event, a lot of things can happen in that time. e.g.dicussing the event. The extraneous variables may be responsible for in/accuracy of recall not anxiety.Another limitation is ethical issues, Creating anxiety can cause psychological harm to the participants. So real life studies are beneficial (Yuilee and Cutshall 1986) as they is no need to create an event as it has already happened. These ethical issue does not challenge the findings but they do raise issues about conducting research.
- 5The Yerkes and Dodson explanation is limited because it is too simplistic. Anxiety has many elements (cognitive, Behavioural, emotional and physical) therefore making it difficult to measure and define. This explanation assumes one of these is linked to poor performance which fails to take account for other factors..
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- A level Psychology (Memory ) Flashcards on Eyewitness testimony: Anxiety , created by ashleigh pittaway on 24/05/2017.
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