Anxiety in Eyewitness Testimony

The role of concern in eyewitness testimony A laboratory experiment by Loftus (1979)| Aim| To find discover if dread during a witness incident affects the accuracy of later(prenominal) identification.| outgrowth| Participants were exposed to one of two situations:1. They overheard a low-keyed intervention in a laboratory about(predicate) an equipment failure. A individual then emerged from the laboratory retentiveness a compose and with dirty word on his hands.2. They overheard a heated and unconnected exchange between people in the laboratory. After the fail of breaking render and crashing chairs, a earthly concern emerged from the laboratory holding a root word knife cover in blood.Participants were then given 50 photos and asked to identify the person who had come out of the laboratory.| Findings| 1. Those who had witnessed the man holding the pen accurately identified the person 49% of the time.2. Those who had witnessed the man with the bloody su bject knife we successful only 33% of the time.| Conclusion| This determination has come to be known as the tool concentrate phenomenon, where the witness concentrates on the weapon (in this exercise the bloodstained radical knife) and this distracts wariness from the appearance of the perpetrator.

Loftus concluded that the venerate or anxiety induced by the sight of the weapon narrows the focus of attention and gives rise to very accurate revoke of the central lucubrate of the scene, but less accurate call of peripheral details.| valuation| Later research by Loftus and destroy (1982) has provided support for t his finding. Participants watched either a ! violent or non-violent briefly film of a crime. Those who saw the violent version, in which a boy was supposition in the face, were less accurate in recalling information about the crime.However, it is mainly laboratory studies that produce this result. They could be accused of deficient validity, as a rather dissimilar picture emerges if we construe at field studies of real-life events.The experiment raises good issues about the well-being of...If you want to get a full-of-the-moon essay, order it on our website: OrderCustomPaper.com

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