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UNCONSCIOUSTRANSFERENCE

Unconscious transference is a memory error that occurs

when an eyewitness to a crime misidentifies a familiar

but innocent person from a police lineup. Historically,

the use of the term unconsciousrefers to the idea that

the witness who misidentifies the familiar foil (an inno-

cent person in a police lineup) has no conscious recol-

lection of the previous encounter with the person. A

classic real world example involved a case where a

ticket agent at a train station was robbed and misidenti-

fied a former customer from a lineup. While the cus-

tomer had an ironclad alibi, the ticket agent maintained

that the person appeared all too familiar to him. Failing

to recollect that he was a former customer, the ticket

agent apparently based his identification on a sense of

familiarity alone and incorrectly associated that with

the crime. There is evidence that foils who are familiar

to an eyewitness are at risk of being misidentified, but

the literature suggests that the process through which it

happens is not “unconscious,” but, rather, involves a

conscious recollection of the previous exposure to the

familiar foil.

Studies on unconscious transference typically

involve asking witnesses to a mock crime to make an

identification from a lineup that contains a foil who is

familiar or unfamiliar to the witnesses. Using this

design, some studies report that a familiar foil is more

likely to be misidentified than an unfamiliar foil. Other

studies report null results—that prior exposure to a foil

does not increase the probability of a misidentification.

A reverse unconscious transference effect has also been

reported where a familiar foil is less likely to be

misidentified than an unfamiliar foil. In the latter

studies, witnesses remember the foil as familiar but

innocent and quickly dismiss that person as a potential

lineup choice.

So why is there such variability across studies? Two

critical moderator variables, physical similarity and

conscious inferencing, influence the presence or

absence of the unconscious transference error. First,

unconscious transference is most likely to occur when

the familiar foil and the perpetrator are “moderately”

similar in appearance. If they look very different from

one another, then they are not likely to be confused,

regardless of the level of familiarity. Conversely, if

their appearance is so similar that they are indistin-

guishable from one another, then the foil is at risk

of being misidentified regardless of familiarity.

Therefore, a moderate level of similarity between the

foil and the criminal is needed so that when a familiar-

ity component is added, it increases the likelihood of a

misidentification, but only for witnesses previously

exposed to the foil. Unfortunately, in many studies on

this topic, the level of physical similarity between the

familiar foil and the criminal was not controlled or

measured, making their results difficult to interpret.

Second, unconscious transference occurs when wit-

nesses incorrectly infer that the familiar foil and the

criminal are the same person, a process referred to as

conscious inferencing. Conscious inferencing allows

the witness to accurately recall the previous encounter

with the foil, but not dismiss the person as familiar

but innocent. Because the witness thinks the familiar

foil and the criminal are the same person seen in two

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