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EWT 2
EWT and Anxiety
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Anxiety | An unpleasant state of emotional arousal |
| Deffenbacher (1983) | Meta-analysis of 21 studies into anxiety and EWT. Found heightened anxiety negatively affected memory. |
| Yerkes-Dodson | Inverted U Hypothesis (IUH). |
| IUH, moderate amounts of anxiety | improving DETAIL and ACCURACY of recall up to OPTIMAL point. |
| IUH, high levels of anxiety | Past optimal point, increased anxiety leads to decline in detail and accuracy. |
| Repression in anxiety and recall | Freud (1894) saw forgetting as motivated by traumatic content of memory. Access is barred to protect from emotional distress and so accuracy affected. Research evidence strongly criticised. |
| Main criticism of EWT research | Often uses artificial scenarios which have no emotional content for witnesses. Real-life events often have a high anxiety content. |
| Johnson and Scott (1976) | Participants saw a man running with either a pen or knife, who they were asked to identify. 49% accuracy in pen condition but 33% in knife condition. |
| 'weapons effect' | Anxiety may divert attention from important aspects of an event being witnessed. i.e. focus on weapon rather than culprit's face in violent crime. |
| Evaluation, ethical considerations | Studies of anxiety and EWT could produce high levels of psychological harm. |
| Ginet and Verkampt (2007) | Evidence to support IUH. Winesses of a traffic accident who thought they would be given shocks were more accurate in detail. |
| Evaluation points | Ethical considerations, over-simplistic findings, there is no simple conclusion, individual and personality factors, most research is lab based so not easy to generalise to real-life. |
| Evaluation, Deffenbacher (2004) | Reviewed findings, IUH is over-simplistic, EWT performance increased gradually up to very high levels of anxiety of anxiety, then huge drop in performance in accuracy and in detail. Supports catastrophe theory. |
| Loftus et al (1984) | 'Weapon's effect', monitored eyewitness eye movements, found attention drawn to weapon and away from e.g. culprit's face. |
| Christianson and Hubinette (1993) | Questioned real witnesses to bank robberies in Sweden, most anxious witnesses had best recall. Alternative argument, anxiety has a positive effect, creating more enduring and accurate memories. Could be adaptive in evolutionary terms. |
| Evaluation. Pickel (1998) | Weapon focus could be due to surprise rather than anxiety. Found identification was least accurate in high surprise rather than high threat situations. |
| Evaluation, Bothwell et al (1987) | Individual differences, emotional sensitivity. "Stable' participants showed rising levels of accuracy as stress levels increased and the opposite was true for those labelled 'neurotic'. |
| Fazey and Hardy (1988) | Catastrophe theory, more complex relationship between anxiety and performance. |
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bestbiologyteacher
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