2.4.2 Eye Witness Testimony & Anxiety of the Witness

How does anxiety affect eyewitness testimony (EWT)?

• Imagine this: you have just witnessed a fight in a pub in which one person was stabbed:
  • You are likely to experience both physiological and psychological arousal due to witnessing this crime
  • Physiological effects are likely to involve the fight or flight (FoF) response: increased heart rate, sweating, pupils dilated, an adrenaline surge
  • Psychological effects may include heightened emotion such as fear, excitement, shock, distress
  • The police ask for your EWT: will your heightened physiological and psychological state help or hinder your testimony?

The positive effect of anxiety on recall

• Being in a heightened state of physiological arousal (FoF) can enhance EWT
• FoF is a response which has evolved (and stayed with us throughout the course of human evolution) to keep us safe:
  • FoF puts us on 'red alert': widened eyes and dilated pupils mean we can scan the environment for signs of danger and to locate the nearest escape route
  • FoF sends adrenaline to large muscles which can be called upon to either run away or stay and fight
  • A state of heightened alertness means that we are able to pick up on a host of sensory cues in the environment and it is this acute attention to detail which means that eye witness (EW) anxiety may actually boost memory

Research which investigates the positive effect of anxiety on recall

• Yuille & Cutshall (1986) conducted interviews with real-life EWs:
  • The EWs had been in the vicinity of a fatal shooting outside a gun shop in Vancouver, Canada
  • 21 EWs had been present, of which 13 agreed to take part in the research
  • The researchers interviewed the EWs 4-5 months after the incident had taken place, using police-type questions and inserting some misleading information (e.g. asking about a broken headlight or the yellow panel of a car when in fact there was no broken headlight and the car's panel was actually blue)
  • The EWs were also asked to rate their stress level at the time of witnessing the shooting
  • The researchers were able to collect more details from the EWs than the police had (over 1000 details in total compared to the 650 on average found by the police)
  • The EWs scored highly on the accuracy of their recall, veering very little from the original accounts they had given when first witnessing the shooting almost 5 months previously
  • EWs who reported high stress at the time of the shooting were more accurate in their recall than EWs who reported lower stress levels
  • The misleading information had very little effect on recall: 10 out of the total 13 EWs said that there was no broken headlight and no yellow car panel
  • In short, heightened emotion, stress and anxiety may contribute to the accuracy of EWT

Exam tip: You can use Yuille & Cutshall (1986) to answer questions on EWT and misleading information as well: where Loftus & Palmer (1974) found that leading questions affected the reliability of EWT, Yuille & Cutshall (1986) found that leading questions (in the form of misleading information about the broken headlight and car panel) had no such effect.

The negative effect of anxiety on recall

• Being in a heightened state of physiological arousal (FoF) can impair EWT as well
• A state of heightened alertness means that we may be 'frozen' to the extent that we cannot pick up on environmental cues
• A state of heightened alerteness may also mean that we focus on shocking detail during the incident - particularly if a weapon is involved - rather than on details of the criminal
• Taking in only the details of a weapon used by the criminal during a crime - rather than details of the criminal - is known as the weapon focus effect (WFE)

Research which investigates the negative effect of anxiety on recall

• Loftus et al. (1987) investigated WFE using a lab experiment with a sample of 36 students from Washington University, USA:

  • The participants were randomly allocated to one of two conditions (independent measures design)
  • All participants were shown slides (photos) of people queuing up at a 'Taco Time' restaurant
  • In the first (experimental) condition the second person in the queue pulled out a gun when they reached the cashier
  • In the second (control) condition the (same) second person in the queue pulled out a cheque when they reached the cashier
  • The participants were then given 20 multiple-choice questions about what they had just watched
  • The participants were also asked to pick out the person from the photo (who had been seen with the gun/cheque) from a selection of 12 photographs (they were asked how confident they were that they had identified the right person)
  • The results showed that 39% of participants in the control condition correctly identified the person in the queue; this dropped to 11% of participants in the experimental condition
  • Both groups reported equal levels of confidence in their identification of the person in the queue
  • In short, the presence of a weapon may mean that EWs spend longer looking at this than they spend looking at the criminal holding the weapon which means that their testimony is not reliable

Exam tip: It is possible that the experimental condition participants in Loftus et al. (1987) looked at the weapon longer because it was an unexpected object to find in a restaurant queue. If their interest in the weapon was due to surprise or curiosity then this would not explain the WFE (a useful idea to add to any higher-value AO3 questions). You might also want to have a look at research by Pickel (1998) which is very insightful on this topic.

Evaluation of EWT & the anxiety of the witness

Strengths

• Yuille & Cutshall used real-life EWs which means that their research is high in ecological validity
• Loftus et al. replicated their experiment with another 80 students and achieved the same results which means that the findings have good reliability

Weaknesses

• Yuille & Cutshall used a (very) small sample of participants who had witnessed a one-off event which means that their research cannot be replicated plus it is difficult to generalise the findings
• Looking at slides of a person holding a weapon is unlikely to trigger the FoF response which means that Loftus et al.'s research is low in mundane realism