Anxiety

AO1

Negative effect on accuracy Johnson and Scott: Waiting room, argument in adjoining room. Man came out with pen covered in grease (low anxiety condition - 49% accurate at identifying face) or knife covered in blood (high anxiety - 33% accurate). Supports weapon focus effect. Loftus - focuses attention on central features of crime like weapon. Monitored eye movement showed attention was physically drawn to weapon and away from things like the person's face.

Positive effect on accuracy: Evolutionary argument says it is adaptive to remember emotionally important events so we can identify similar situations in the future and recall how to respond. Christianson and Hubinette 58 real witnessed to bank robberies in Sweden, either victims or bystanders, Interviewed 4-15 months after. Recall was over 75% accurate, those most anxious had the best recall. Christianson concluded that memory for negative emotion events are better than for neutral events.

Resolving the contradicton: Deffenbacher reviewed 21 studies on the effects of anxiety on eyewitness memory. 11 reduced…