Illusions
In this chapter, Münsterberg describes a number of cases and experiments that illustrate the vagaries and unreliability of human perception and memory, producing what he refers to as “illusions.” This chapter focuses on the illusions of unconscious transference, change blindness, and the confidence–accuracy relationship. Unconscious transference occurs when an eyewitness identifies an innocent bystander as a culprit because of a previous encounter with the bystander in another context. Change blindness is the inability to notice a change in a visual stimulus. The confidence–accuracy relationship has been one of the most controversial and complex aspects of eyewitness memory, as the strength of the relationship varies depending on a number of individual and situational characteristics, as well as methodological and analytic choices.