Person misidentification through visual information: Toward the psychology of person misidentification

2021 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 18K18699
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Research (Exploratory)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Medium-sized Section 10:Psychology and related fields
• Research Institution: Kyoto Women's University (2021); Keio University (2018-2020)
• Principal Investigator: Itoh Yuji 京都女子大学, 発達教育学部, 教授 (70151545)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 三浦 大志 杏林大学, 保健学部, 講師 (80726084)
• Project Period (FY): 2018-06-29 – 2022-03-31
• Keywords: 人物誤同定 / 認知的失敗 / 人違い / 日誌法 / 実験室実験 / フィールド実験 / 親近性 / 類似性

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The "person misidentification phenomenon," in which people mistakenly judge a person they encounter in their daily lives to be another known person, was examined through diary method questionnaires, field experiments, and laboratory experiments. The questionnaire surveys revealed the frequency and the situation of misidentifications in daily life, and the characteristics of the persons. In the field experiments, we set up a rendezvous scene and tried to have the subjects make misidentifications in everyday situations outside the laboratory, and showed that about 30% of the subjects actually made ones. In the laboratory experiments, an experimental paradigm was developed to artificially generate person misidentifications in the laboratory, and it was shown that increasing familiarity with the faces of unknown persons through subliminal mere exposure increased the frequency of person misidentifications.

Free Research Field

認知心理学　司法心理学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

これまで心理学では、意図的、意識的に対象の人物に注意を向けて行う人物同定や誤同定についての研究は行われてきたが、われわれが日常経験するような人違いについてはほとんど研究されてこなかった。本研究は、日常的な人違いがどのような現象であるかの概略を示し、可能な研究方法の提案、問題の整理などを行うことができ、人違い研究が心理学の一領域として進められるべきであり、領域として成り立つことを示すことができた。研究の成果は、将来的には目撃供述の信頼性の検討や振り込め詐欺（オレオレ詐欺）の防止にも役立つ可能性があり、この点でも意義が認められる。