A field experiment demonstrating person misidentification at an appointed meeting place

Abstract

Mistaking a person for another sometimes occurs; however, few studies have examined it experimentally. Therefore, the reasons behind this kind of person misidentification and its occurrence rate remain unclear, and thus we aimed to demonstrate person misidentification occurs with a certain probability through a field experiment. We also sought 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 at first sight but became less important over time. This suggests a dynamic shift in person identification depending on time.