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Contemporary Study: Valentine T & Mesout J 2009: Eyewitness…
Contemporary Study: Valentine T & Mesout J 2009: Eyewitness Identification under stress in the London Dungeon
AIMS:
- Early investigations of EWT, such as that conducted by Loftus & Palmer had successfully demonstrated the unreliability of memory under lab conditions
- However, context didn't reflect the heightened anxiety would be experienced in a real life eye-witness situation
- V & M sought to address this by testing eye-witness identification in any everyday situation within which anxiety would be high & participants wouldn't realise their memory was being tested
PROCEDURE:
- Setting was London Dungeon
- Participants tested in the labyrinth (walking tour part of the experience in which visitors are 'treated' to a series of scary events)
- Pre-test conducted by the researchers established that the labyrinth induced significant increases in heart rate amongst those who experienced it, suggesting elevated levels of arousal/fear
- 56 participants in main experiment, all whom agreed to complete a series of questionnaires in exchange for reduced ticket price
- Were unaware they were part of a psychological investigation
- All participant walked round Labyrinth for 7 mins & all encountered a scary person during time
- After finishing tour, consent was obtained, participants had the aims of experiment explained to them & given right to withdraw
Those who consented completed 3 questionnaires:
- Trait Anxiety Inventory (TAI) measured participants' typical state of anxiety - how generally feel
- State Anxiety Inventory (SAI) which measured how participants' felt when they were in Labyrinth
- Memory questionnaire which tested participants' recall of the scary person - included free recall description as well as other cued recall elements - scored for accuracy by an independent panel
Finally, participants asked to identify the scary person from a group of 9 photos - Photos were matched for sex, age & ethnic origin to the actor playing the scary person. Participants were told the actor may/may not be in 1 of pics shown
FINDINGS:
- Mean SAI score whilst in the Labyrinth was 49.0 - significantly higher than the TAI score of 36.8
- Showed that participants had found the Labyrinth to be an anxiety-inducing experience
- After analysing data for identification of the scary person, the researchers observed a strong -ve association between state anxiety & ability to correctly report the appearance of a person encountered under stress - i.e. witnesses who experienced higher state anxiety were able to remember fewer correct descriptors than those who were less anxious
- Participants were divided into those whose state anxiety was higher than the median score (52) & those whose anxiety was lower
-Only 17% of those who scored higher than the median anxiety score correctly identified scary person from the line-up > For those scoring lower than the median, the corresponding figure was 75%
CONCLUSIONS:
- V & M's study suggests accurate eye-witness identification is impaired under conditions of high anxiety
- It's suggested memory is -vely affected by increased physiological arousal, & this leads to less reliable eye-witness accounts
- Study also suggests lab studies of EWT, where it's difficult to replicate the experience of real-life anxiety, may underestimate effect of stress on eye-witness reliability - higher the level of stress experienced in a real crime scenario, the harder it becomes to correctly identify the perpetrator
EVALUATION
Strength
Level of control
Despite this being a field study, the researchers were able to maintain a high degree of control - pre-test was conducted with different set of participants to test the validity of the state-anxiety questionnaire
Achieved by correlating the pre-test participant's heart rate (objective measure) as they walked around the Labyrinth with their self-report of anxiety on the questionnaire (subjective measure).
High degree of similarity between the 2 measures which suggested the questionnaire was valid - also, in real investigation, time participants spent in the Labyrinth & their overall experience at London Dungeon, were carefully standardised > Improved the internal validity of the investigation
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During the tour, participants didn't know they were part of the study
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