Describe and Evaluate the effect of anxiety on eye witness testimony 16 marks: Essay Plan
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Course
Memory
Institution
AQA
This detailed essay plan has 4 main points that construct the 4 paragraphs for your essay. Each paragraph follows a point, evidence, explanation (P.E.E.) technique with support studies (e.g Johnson and Scott, Riniolo 2003) and further evaluation of the results. The main focus of the points are AO...
1. Negative effect on EWT
A01: Weapon-focus effect. Weapons are a cause of anxiety; therefore, witnesses are
distracted, focusing all their attention on the weapon rather than the criminal.
A03: Support from Johnson and Scott. the presence of a knife resulted in decreasing
participants' focus on the man's face because all their attention was directed to the
weapon itself. Therefore, suggests that anxiety has a negative effect on the accuracy
of recall. + Research in EWT often has no emotional impact on the participant,
resulting in low validity of results.
2. In real world may have a positive effect.
A01: After interviewing 13 Canadian witnesses to a deadly shooting four months after
the event it was found that they resisted misleading information and those with most
stress (closer to the shooter) produced the most accurate EWT. This suggest that
misleading information and anxiety may not be a significant problem for real world
eye witness testimony.
A03: Further support for anxiety having a positive effect on recall was provided by
Riniolo (2003). He examined EWT from survivors of the Titanic sinking. They
suggested that the ship broke in two before sinking - this goes against what
historians thought had happened. It was discovered that the witnesses were actually
correct. This suggests accuracy is maintained for central details of events despite
traumatic circumstances. Therefore, not only the study explains weapon focus effect
but also supports the real-world application of the use of EWT and provides evidence
that anxiety can have a positive effect on the accuracy of EWT.
3. Yerkes - Dodson model
This model suggest that anxiety is positive in terms of accuracy of recall because as
anxiety increases the witness becomes more alert. However at a point when anxiety
becomes too high the accuracy decreases because the stress a person is
experiencing becomes a distraction.
4. A strength of research investigating EWT is its application to the criminal
justice system, which relies heavily on eyewitness identification for
investigating and prosecuting crimes.
It is believed that mistaken eye witness identification was the largest single factor
contributing to the conviction of innocent people. Understanding that EWT is not
always accurate and there are many factors at play when recalling an event helped
the justice system be more fair. Cognitive interview was developed to reduce the
influence of schemas and anxiety on the accuracy of recall. The development of
cognitive interview demonstrates the important role of research into EWT in ensuring
that innocent people are convicted of crimes they didn't commit on the basis of faulty
EWT.
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