A descriptive study on misidentifications of a person as a familiar person in an everyday situation

Frequency of person misidentifications

Estimation of the frequency

In this study, we investigated person misidentification, in which people mistakenly identify a witnessed person as a known person. We used an ordinary questionnaire and a diary method to determine how often and what kinds of people misidentified other people. We found that most of the participants had experienced person misidentification at least once a year, and the frequency was considered to be 6 (the participants’ estimates in Pre-questionnaire) to 19 (estimated from the numbers of reports in Diary) per year on average….