Person misidentification occurs in one-half of cases: Demonstration in a field experiment

Few studies have examined person misidentification. Due to the lack of experimental studies, the reason person misidentification occurs, and its occurrence rate, remains unclear. Therefore, we aimed to demonstrate that person misidentification occurs with a certain probability, in a field experiment. We also wanted to examine whether the similarity between two people affects the occurrence of person misidentification. When 66 undergraduate participants made a rendezvous with an acquaintance, another person who wore similar clothes to the acquaintance or had a similar face appeared. The results showed that in both the conditions, approximately half of the participants made the person misidentification error, and one-fourth even spoke to the person mistakenly. Moreover, the results indicated that clothing contributed to person misidentification just as much as the face in the first seeing but became less important over time. This suggests a dynamic shift in person identification depending on time.