Fatal impact? The effects of emotional arousal and weapon presence on police officers' memories for a simulated crime

Purpose. (1) To investigate the effects of emotional arousal and weapon presence on the completeness and accuracy of police officers' memories; and (2) to better simulate the experience of witnessing a shooting and providing testimony. Methods. A firearms training simulator was used to present 70 experienced police officers with either a shooting or a domestic dispute scenario containing no weapons. Arousal was measured using both self-report and physiological indices. Recall for event details was tested after a 10-minute delay using a structured interview. Identification accuracy was assessed with a photographic line-up. Results. Self-report measures confirmed that the shooting induced greater arousal than did the other scenario. Overall, officers' memories for the event were less complete, but more accurate, when they had witnessed the shooting. The recall and line-up data did not support a weapon focus effect. Conclusions. Police officers' recall performance can be affected both qualitatively and quantitatively by witnessing an arousing event such as a shooting.

[1]  P. Chapman,et al.  Visual Search of Driving Situations: Danger and Experience , 1998, Perception.

[2]  Pär Anders Granhag,et al.  The man behind the mask: accuracy and predictors of eyewitness offender descriptions. , 2004, The Journal of applied psychology.

[3]  G. Gudjonsson,et al.  Occupational Stressors among British Police Officers , 1985 .

[4]  N. Steblay.  A meta-analytic review of the weapon focus effect , 1992 .

[5]  S. Christianson,et al.  Police personnel as eyewitnesses to a violent crime , 1998 .

[6]  J. Yuille,et al.  A case study of eyewitness memory of a crime. , 1986, The Journal of applied psychology.

[7]  M. Macleod,et al.  Watching the birdie watching you: eyewitness memory for actions using CCTV recordings of actual crimes , 2001 .

[8]  M. A. Safer,et al.  Tunnel memory for traumatic events , 1998 .

[9]  K. Ochsner,et al.  Are affective events richly recollected or simply familiar? The experience and process of recognizing feelings past. , 2000, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[10]  J. Yuille,et al.  Adult Eyewitness Testimony: Actual victims and witnesses to robbery and fraud: An archival analysis , 1994 .

[11]  A. Ohman,et al.  Emotion drives attention: detecting the snake in the grass. , 2001, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[12]  E F Loftus,et al.  Mental shock can produce retrograde amnesia , 1982, Memory & cognition.

[13]  S. Christianson.  Emotional stress and eyewitness memory: a critical review. , 1992, Psychological bulletin.

[14]  Andrew Mathews,et al.  Take a closer look: emotion modifies the boundary extension effect. , 2004, Emotion.

[15]  Steven D. Penrod,et al.  CHOOSING, CONFIDENCE, AND ACCURACY : A META-ANALYSIS OF THE CONFIDENCE-ACCURACY RELATION IN EYEWITNESS IDENTIFICATION STUDIES , 1995 .

[16]  Stephan Hamann,et al.  Cognitive and neural mechanisms of emotional memory , 2001, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[17]  Thomas C. Johnson,et al.  Effects of stress induced by a simulated shooting on recall by police and citizen witnesses. , 2000, The American journal of psychology.

[18]  J. Yuille,et al.  Weapon focus in sexual assault memories of prostitutes. , 2002, International journal of law and psychiatry.

[19]  K. Pickel.  Unusualness and threat as possible causes of "weapon focus". , 1998, Memory.

[20]  J. Easterbrook.  The effect of emotion on cue utilization and the organization of behavior. , 1959, Psychological review.

[21]  T. Beehr,et al.  Working in a violent environment: The accuracy of police officers' reports about shooting incidents , 2004 .

[22]  M. Robertson,et al.  Sources of acute stress and their appraisals and reappraisals among Australian police as a function of previous experience , 1997 .

[23]  A. Maass,et al.  Eyewitness identification: Simulating the “Weapon effect” , 1989 .

[24]  Shelley E. Taylor,et al.  Asymmetrical effects of positive and negative events: the mobilization-minimization hypothesis. , 1991, Psychological bulletin.

[25]  Eyewitness Memory of Police Trainees for Realistic Role Plays , 1994 .

[26]  A. Ohman,et al.  The face in the crowd revisited: a threat advantage with schematic stimuli. , 2001, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[27]  K. Deffenbacher,et al.  A Meta-Analytic Review of the Effects of High Stress on Eyewitness Memory , 2004, Law and human behavior.

[28]  S. Christianson,et al.  Hands up! A study of witnesses' emotional reactions and memories associated with bank robberies , 1993 .

[29]  Scott T. Grafton,et al.  Amygdala activity related to enhanced memory for pleasant and aversive stimuli , 1999, Nature Neuroscience.

[30]  S. Christianson,et al.  Police officers and civilians as witnesses: intergroup biases and memory performance , 1997 .

[31]  John M. Violanti,et al.  Police stressors: Variations in perception among police personnel , 1995 .

[32]  D. Bem.  Self-Perception Theory , 1972 .

[33]  M. Atkinson,et al.  Impact of the HeartMath Self-Management Skills Program on Physiological and Psychological Stress in Police Officers , 1999 .

[34]  Geoffrey R. Loftus,et al.  Some facts about “weapon focus” , 1987 .

[35]  J L McGaugh,et al.  Amygdala activity at encoding correlated with long-term, free recall of emotional information. , 1996, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[36]  B. Bornstein,et al.  Repeated testing in eyewitness memory : A means to improve recall of a negative emotional event , 1998 .

[37]  K. Pickel.  The Influence of Context on the “Weapon Focus” Effect , 1999 .