The Innocence Project is an American nonprofit organisation whose goal is to forgive people wrongly convicted of a crime. They use DNA evidence and review cases to overturn wrongful convictions of people imprisoned for decades.
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Sign up for freeWhere was Valentine and Mesout's (2009) study on the effect of anxiety on eyewitness testimony carried out?
What is an example of the negative effects of anxiety on eyewitness testimony?
Johnson and Scott (1976) found that its's easier to identify someone in ___ anxiety situation.
Johnson and Scott (1976) findings suggest that anxiety ______ witness testimony.
Yuille and Cutshall (1986) investigated people that witnessed a recorded shooting.
Yuille and Cutshall (1986) found that 5 months after the shooting, the witnesses' memory was ________ right after the shooting.
According to the study of Christianson and Hübinette (1993), who had the best memory of a bank robbery?
Intense stress and anxiety always affect eyewitness testimony negatively.
Where was Valentine and Mesout's (2009) study on the effect of anxiety on eyewitness testimony carried out?
What is an example of the negative effects of anxiety on eyewitness testimony?
Johnson and Scott (1976) found that its's easier to identify someone in ___ anxiety situation.
Johnson and Scott (1976) findings suggest that anxiety ______ witness testimony.
Yuille and Cutshall (1986) investigated people that witnessed a recorded shooting.
Yuille and Cutshall (1986) found that 5 months after the shooting, the witnesses' memory was ________ right after the shooting.
According to the study of Christianson and Hübinette (1993), who had the best memory of a bank robbery?
Intense stress and anxiety always affect eyewitness testimony negatively.
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Team Eyewitness Identification under Stress Teachers
Eyewitness misidentification is the most significant contributing factor to wrongful convictions proven by DNA testing, playing a role in more than 70% of convictions overturned through DNA testing nationwide.
If eyewitness misidentification is consistently wrong, why is it still so impactful?
While we have all heard about eyewitness identification in a court setting, there is much more to identification than remembering who you saw.
Eyewitness identification in psychology is about the ability of a witness to recall the details of accidents or crimes they had observed.
Unfortunately, eyewitness identification is not as reliable as we would like it to be. There is a large weight placed on eyewitness identification in courts, but unfortunately, a wide variety of factors can influence eyewitness memories and identifications.
Psychological research has found several significant factors affecting eyewitness testimony. These include misleading questions, confirmation bias, post-event discussions, and anxiety.
Let’s break them down.
Confirmation bias is when the person’s expectations influence and distort the eyewitness memory of, for example, who the perpetrator might be.
An eyewitness might think that someone younger would commit a crime, leading their memory of the event to distort based on that belief.
Misleading questions are asked in such a way or contain information that gives the impression that something happened, which was not the case, e.g., ‘Was there blood on the knife?’ when there was no knife.
This can happen in interviews with authorities right after a crime or during a court trial. Detectives, interviewers, or lawyers can ask (intentionally or unintentionally) misleading questions that can lead the eyewitness to second-guess their memory based on the question. In some cases, this can change someone’s memory.
Fig. 1. Questions in a courtroom can change someone’s memory. Wikimedia commons.
Post-event discussion is when discussion with other eyewitnesses who saw the crime affects a person’s memory.
Post-event discussion can also change someone’s memory. Every time you remember an event, you pull it from your long-term memory storage. When it is pulled, it is susceptible to change. When talking with another eyewitness, you risk altering your memory.
Anxiety is a state of emotional and physical arousal caused by stress. Emotions such as worry and tension and physical changes such as increased heart rate and sweatiness occur. Both emotions and physical changes affect the accuracy and detail of eyewitness testimony.
Anxiety is produced in stressful situations such as accidents or crimes. You go through physiological and psychological changes that can affect your memory of the event and, therefore, your testimony’s reliability.
The strong emotional and physical effects of stress and anxiety can negatively or positively impact eyewitness testimony.
One theory is that stress and anxiety prevent you from focusing on the details of an event, making it harder to remember.
One way to test this is to study the effects of the presence of weapons which trigger anxiety and shift the focus on the weapon rather than the event details. This is called weapon focus.
Johnson and Scott (1976) asked participants to identify a man they saw walking out of a room in either a high-anxiety situation (an argument, then a man walking out with a bloody knife) or a low-anxiety situation (a conversation, then a man walking out with greasy hands and a pen in his hand).
49% of participants in the low anxiety situation correctly identified the man, but only 33% of participants in the high anxiety situation did so.
The finding suggests anxiety worsens eyewitness testimony.
Another theory is that witnessing a stressful event that triggers anxiety induces the fight-or-flight response in your body, making you more alert. You would notice more details and thus remember the event better.
Example - Yuille and Cutshall (1986):
They found the victims remembered the events more accurately than the bystanders.
The researchers found that anxiety did not influence eyewitness memory.
The Yerkes-Dodson law can explain the different effects of anxiety on memory, stating there is a relationship between stress and performance. Stress increases performance, but only up to a point. After that, excessive stress harms performance. Applied to eyewitness memory, this means that anxiety can improve memory performance, but only up to a certain point.
Let us now examine the Valentine and Mesout (2009) study on eyewitness identification under stress in the London Dungeon.
Fig. 2. The London Dungeon. Wikimedia commons.
The aim of this study was:
To test the relationship between stress/anxiety and recall.
To test whether or not high arousal/anxiety reduced the accuracy of eyewitness memory and eyewitness identification.
Design:
Independent variable – stress/anxiety level.
Dependent variable – accuracy of eyewitness identification.
Participants:
The study used an opportunity sample (people who are available and willing to participate) of 56 participants (29 females, 27 males).
Materials:
Self-report questionnaire for anxiety levels.
Heart monitor.
Procedure:
Valentine and Mesout (2009) conducted a study in a real-world context in the Horror Labyrinth, London Dungeons.
There were jump scares, darkness, screams, gory models, etc., and participants encountered an actor dressed in scary clothes and makeup.
Researchers recorded the participants’ anxiety with both heart monitors.
Participants first experienced the dungeon and only then were informed of the purpose of the experiment. If they agreed to continue the study, they had to complete a self-report questionnaire about anxiety.
They had to describe an actor they had encountered in the labyrinth without guessing things they did not know (to avoid confirmation bias).
Then they had to identify him in a line of nine people and were told he might or might not be present in the line.
Findings:
Women reported higher levels of anxiety. The high anxiety group remembered less accurate details and made more errors. They also identified the actor less correctly (17%) than the low anxiety group (75%).
Conclusion:
Females have higher anxiety levels in stressful situations, which may affect eyewitness recall accuracy. In general, high anxiety levels decrease eyewitness identification accuracy.
The strengths of the study were:
There were good controls because the same actor, questionnaire, and lineup were used each time.
It was a field study, meaning it took place in a natural environment.
The researchers validated the questionnaire by testing it on office workers to make sure it measured anxiety.
Because both the questionnaire and the heart monitor were used, the study could compare anxiety traits (a personality trait that says how susceptible someone is to anxious situations) and state anxiety (temporary anxiety due to a specific situation).
The researchers made sure to obtain informed consent before proceeding with the study, reminded participants of their right to withdraw, maintained data confidentiality, and debriefed participants.
A weakness of the study is:
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What are the problems with eyewitness identification?
The problem with eyewitness identification is that other factors can affect accuracy, e.g., stress and anxiety, misleading questions, post-event discussion, and confirmation bias.
How does stress affect eyewitness identification?
Stress can either negatively or positively affect the accuracy and detail of eyewitness testimony. There is a relationship between stress and performance; stress increases performance, but only up to a point. After that, excessive stress harms performance.
What are the three stages of eyewitness identification?
Three stages of eyewitness identification are witnessing the event, storing the memory, and remembering it.
What was concluded from the Valentine and Mesout (2009) study?
Females have higher anxiety levels in stressful situations, which may affect eyewitness recall accuracy. In general, high anxiety levels decrease eyewitness identification accuracy.
What was the aim of the Valentine and Mesout (2009) study?
To test the relationship between stress/anxiety and recall and whether or not high arousal/anxiety reduced the accuracy of eyewitness memory and eyewitness identification.
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