Describe and evaluate research that has investigated the influence of anxiety on the accuracy on eye witness testimony. This is essentially a full 16-mark question which is all you need for the exam, you can also use it to answer all 4,6,8, 12 mark questions in the exam all you have to do is break ...
Describe and evaluate research that has investigated the influence of anxiety
on the accuracy on eye witness testimony. (16 marks)
Anxiety is a state of emotional and physical arousal. The emotions include having worried
thoughts and feeling of tension and physical changes include increase heart rate and
sweatiness. Moreover, anxiety can have an effect on the detail and accuracy of EWT and is a
normal reaction to stressful conditions.
Loftus and Palmers weapon focus study 1979 supports the influence of anxiety on EWT. The
aim of the study was to see if anxiety in EWT affected later identification. Two groups in
different conditions observed a violent and non-violent event. In condition 1 a man exited a
lab holding a pen and in condition 2 a man exited a lab holding a paper knife covered in
blood after a heated conversation. The group part of the violent condition had 33% accuracy
in identifying the man from 50 photos, whereas the non-violent group were more accurate
49%. This study shows the weapon focus phenomena as participants focused on the weapon
rather than the person and show why some witnesses struggle in crimes as they focus on
the weapon only. (negative effect on recall)
Whereas Yuille and Cutshalls study shows a positive effect of anxiety on the accuracy of
EWT. The owner of a shop shot dead a thief and 13 witnesses participated and they were
interviewed after 4-5 months after the shooting. They were also asked to rate how stressed
they felt at the time of the incident. The results from the interviews found witnesses were
very accurate in their accounts and little change in accuracy had occurred over 5 months.
Moreover, the findings show that participants who reported high levels of stress were more
accurate 88% compared to the less stress group 75%. This study shows how stress may have
aided the recall of witnesses.
A strength of the influence of anxiety on EWT is that it can have a positive effect on recall.
For example, Yuille and Cutshalls study of the shooting in Canada demonstrates how anxiety
and stress could influence recall positively. This is as witnesses of the shooting in the study
were found to have a good memory of the stressful situation even after observing someone
being killed when interview 4-5 after the event. This is because when witnessing a
crime/accident our fight/flight response is activated which increases our alertness and
improves our memory as we become more aware of cues. Therefore, the influence of
anxiety on EWT could be useful in real life situations, for instance when students are about
to sit an exam if they experience anxiety, stress this could aid their memory in recalling
information, methods etc resulting in them achieving a high grade.
A limitation of the influence of anxiety on EWT is Yerkes and Rodsons inverted ‘U’ is too
simplistic. This is because Yerkes and Rodsons curve only focuses on physiological arousal
when there are 4 other factors. Moreover, anxiety is difficult to measure and define and has
many elements to it such as cognitive, behavioural, emotional and physical. Thus, Yerkes
and Rodsons inverted U is too basic as it doesn’t look at anxiety as a whole and lacks
reliability as you are unable to actually measure it.
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