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Anxiety affecting EWT - Coggle Diagram
Anxiety affecting EWT
Anxiety has a negative effect of recall
Weapon Focus
- anxiety creates a physiological arousal in the body which prevents us paying attention to important cues - recall is worse
- study anxiety & EWT - look at effect of presence of a weapon which creates anxiety
- leads to focus on weapon reducing witness's recall for other details of event
Johnson & Scott (1976)
- carried out study with 2 conditions
- condition 1 - low anxiety
- participants heard discussion in adjoining room - then a man emerged holding a pen with grease on his hands
- condition 2 - high anxiety
- participants heard a more heated discussion * man emerged holding a paper knife covered in blood
- both believed they were taking part in a lab study
Findings
- when asked to identify man from 50 photos:
- condition 1 : 49% accurate
- condition 2 : 33% accurate
'Tunnel Theory'
- findings suggest that weapon distracted attention from person holding it & therefore explains why EW sometimes have poor recall for certain details of violent crime
Pickle (1998)
- used scissors, handgun, wallet & a raw chicken as a hand held item in a hairdressing salon video
- scissors constituted low anxiety
- other constituted high anxiety
- found EWT accuracy was significantly poorer in high unusualness conditions
- suggests that weapon focus effect (Tunnel Theory) is due to unusualness rather than anxiety
Furthermore
- Pickle (1999) found no evidence of weapon focus when EW saw someone pointing a gun in a situation (shooting range) in which guns are expected
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EVALUATION
!LIMITATION!
Unusualness not anxiety
- study by Johnson & Scott - may not have tetsted anxiety
- reason why participants focused on weapon may be because they were surprised rather than scared
- Pickle (1998) -scissors, handgun, wallet & chicken
- EW accuracy significantly poorer in high unusualness conditions
- suggests weapon focus is due to unusualness rather than anxiety
- therefore tells us nothing specifically about effects of anxiety on EWT
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Yerkes-Dodson Law
- Inverted U theory states performance will increase with stress but only to a certain point - where it decreases drastically
-limitation: - ignores anxiety has many elements (cognitive, behavioral, physical & emotional) as it only focuses on physical arousal