Ross, D. F., Ceci, S. J., Dunning, D., & Toglia, M. P. (1994). Unconscious transference and mistaken identity: When a witness misidentifies a familiar but innocent person. Journal of Applied Psychology, 79, 918-930.
Ross et al., (1994) provide excellent background information on unconscious transference, including various theoretical perspectives that have been proposed as explanations for the phenomenon. The theoretical position that Ross and colleagues espouse relates to the notion of conscious inference, in which a witness to a crime actually thinks that the perpetrator and an innocent familiar person are one in the same. The authors propose, contrary to others (see Read et al., (1990)), that conscious inference can occur at encoding such that the perpetrator and the innocent person are inferred to be one and the same from the initial presentation of both faces.
Hypotheses include the pronounced occurrence of a transference effect depending on various lineups including the bystander present, the perpetrator present, or both present. Thus, when viewing a bystander present lineup, participants in the transference group compared to the control group were expected to misidentify the innocent bystander more often. In the perpetrator present lineup, participants, regardless of condition, should be equally accurate in correctly identifying the perpetrator from the lineup. For lineups including both the bystander and the perpetrator, participants in the control group should correctly choose the perpetrator to a greater extent than those in the transference group due to the presence of the bystander in the lineup. Transference participants should still choose the perpetrator to a greater extent compared to choosing the bystander, but some will still erroneously choose the bystander thinking he is the same person as the perpetrator.
Experiment 1 found support for the aforementioned hypotheses. In Experiment 2 researchers informed the participants in the transference condition that the perpetrator and the bystander in the video were two different people, expecting this to eliminate transference effects. They were correct, and concluded that knowing that the perpetrator and a familiar innocent bystander encoded around the same time during a mock-crime video are two different people will not allow for any inferences to be made regarding the identity of each person, because information is provided allowing them to differentiate between the two faces. Experiments 3 and 4 provide evidence that conscious inference occurs at the encoding stage. Experiment 3 requested context information from participants about the video right after encoding and also at the presentation of the lineup (retrieval). They found that during the video the participants made the conscious inference, stating that the innocent bystander was the same person as the perpetrator when giving details about the perpetrators subsequent activities during the video after the occurrence of the mock crime. Experiment 4 required participants to stop the tape while viewing it when they saw the perpetrator after the crime. Participants stopped the tape at scenes in which the innocent bystander was portrayed, thus indicating the temporal sequencing of conscious inference, evident as occurring as early as encoding.
The authors suggest a new title for this phenomenon given that witnesses do remember encountering a bystander, because they have to recognize the face in order to misidentify them from a lineup, which is involves conscious processing despite remembering the incorrect context or role that the bystander actually played (i.e., an innocent role versus the role of the perpetrator during instances in which both are viewed in the same context).
By DP
For February 10th’s meeting, I paged through Dwight’s readings and selected Unconscious Transference and Mistaken Identity: When a Witness Misidentifies a Familiar but Innocent Person. It looks to address the cause the cause of the phenomenon of unconscious transference, and focuses on three possible causes: automatic processing, which is a sort of innate memory that is independent from conscious memory, but can be voluntarily recalled; deliberate source monitoring at retrieval, which is confusion during retrieval of a memory, which may lead to attributing a crime to a bystander as opposed to the actual assailant, even though the witness realizes that the bystander and assailant are different people; and conscious interference, which occurs during encoding, and states that the bystander could be encoded as the assailant, especially if they have similar appearances.
Throughout the four experiments, subjects were led to believe they were observing teaching approaches, then later in the video clip were exposed to the theft of the teacher’s money from her wallet at lunch. To study the bystander effect in one experiment, transference groups were exposed to a male that was similar to the assailant earlier in the video reading to a group of students, while the control group was shown a clip with the victim of the theft reading to the group instead of the bystander male. When given a lineup, many of the transference groups identified the bystander when he was grouped with four foils instead of rejecting the lineup. The results of the experiments appear to lend more credence to the idea of conscious inference over automatic processing and deliberate source monitoring at retrieval, although the authors state that its more than likely a result of all three (or more) facets and more research is required to find the contributions of each to the unconscious transference.
SB
The reading by Ross et al. (1994) on unconscious transference and mistaken identity was very informative and interesting. Although it was kind of a tough read, it had a lot of good material. I under stood the main points of the article, but it was kind of hard distinguishing the difference between unconscious and conscious transference.
In the first experiment, one group watched a film of a robbery taking place and saw an innocent bystander as well as the perpetrator. A control group also watched the movie but the bystander was not present in their film. The two groups were then to distinguish who was the robber although he was not present, but the bystander was. The group that saw the innocent bystander linked the bystander and the perp together thinking that they were the same person. This is referred to as conscious inference. This happens when people have seen the person in a different context yet they believe they are the perp and are unable to distinguish between the two.
Unconscious transference is when an eyewitness misidentifies a perpetrator of a crime for someone else who is familiar. This can lead to lead to false identifications. The unconscious part of the mistaken identity is that the witness does not have conscious knowledge of the previous encounter with the bystander. The transference group was three times as likely to misidentify the perp as the control group.
The background research they included by Houts (1956) about a sailor who was mistaken for as the perpetrator in a robbery was interesting. The ticket agent identified him as the guy because the sailor lived close to the railroad and had purchased tickets a few days earlier. The memory of the sailor was confused with the identity of the robber. This shows unconscious transference. I can see how both unconscious transference and conscious inference can take place. It is very easy to mistake people for others and it would be heightened when you are a witness or victim of a crime.