AQA A Level Psychology复习笔记2.4.2 Eye Witness Testimony & Anxiety of the Witness

• Being a witness to a crime is likely to create anxiety in the witness. But how does this impact the accuracy of their recall?

How does anxiety affect an eyewitness?

• Loftus (1979) reported on the finding of Johnson and Scott (1976) who asked participants to wait outside a room before the ‘real’ experiment began
• Participants were placed in two conditions:
  • One group heard a conversation and then a person leaving, clutching a greasy pen
  • The second group heard a heated argument and a person leaving, clutching a blood-stained knife
• When asked to identify the person leaving the room from 50 photographs the pen condition was correctly identified as the man 49% of the time whilst the knife was correct 33% of the time
• It was concluded that the anxiety of seeing the knife created anxiety and impacted recall
• This is known as weapon focus

How can we evaluate eyewitness testimony and anxiety?

• The study lacks ecological validity
• There are ethical issues as participants may have been harmed by the experiment
• In real life, witnesses are often much more accurate as they are aware their testimony may have an implication i.e. they may have to state this in court or to the police
• Christianson and Hubinette (1993) studied 110 witnesses who had been part of 22 real-life bank robberies to see the impact that anxiety had on them
• It was found that 15 months after the robberies they could still provide accurate testimony, that matched the one given in the hours after the robbery
• Yuille and Cutshall (1986) found similar when they interviewed 13 witnesses to a real-life shooting in a US store
• Implications of real-life testimony mean witnesses tend to be more accurate