Unconscious Transference

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 unconscious refers to the idea that the witness who misidentifies the familiar foil (an innocent person in a police lineup) has no conscious recollection 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 misidentified a former customer from a lineup. While the customer 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 indistinguishable 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 familiarity 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 witnesses 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 [Page 822]different places (at the crime scene and the place where they saw the familiar foil), recollecting the previous encounter with the familiar foil only reinforces the misidentification. Several studies have demonstrated that unconscious transference effects can be eliminated by preventing conscious inferencing. This can be done by telling witnesses just prior to making a lineup identification that the familiar foil and the criminal are not the same person, or by presenting a lineup that contains the familiar foil and the criminal. These procedures allow witnesses to distinguish between the familiar foil and the criminal, to realize that they are not the same person, and the result is often a correct, positive identification of the criminal.

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