Factors affecting eyewitness testimony: Anxiety

Anxiety has a negative effect on recall

• Johnson and Scott (weapon focus): high-anxiety knife condition lead to worse recall.
• Tunnel theory of memory.

Anxiety has a positive effect on recall

• Yuille and Cutshall (shooting): high anxiety associated with better recall when witnessing real crime.

Explaining the contradictory findings

• Yerkes - Dodson law suggests both low and high anxiety lead to poor recall (Deffenbacher).

Weapon focus effect may not be relevant

• Pickel (raw chicken) showed that it may be surprise and therefore tells us nothing about effects of anxiety.

Field studies sometimes lack control

• Researchers can't control what happens to witnesses between the crime and the interview.

There are ethical issues

• Creating anxiety in lab studies may cause psychological harm.

Evaluation extra

• The inverted-U explanation is too simplistic
• Demand characteristics operate in lab studies of anxiety