An eyewitness from a crime is asked to look through some mugshots to see if he can identify the person who committed the crime. After doing this, he sees a police lineup of suspects and identifies one of the men as the person who committed the crime because he looks very familiar. Unfortunately, the man in the lineup looks familiar not because the eyewitness saw him commit the crime, but because he saw his face in the mugshot books a few hours ago and the eyewitness has forgotten this. This example best demonstrates the phenomenon of
A)proactive interference
B)retrograde amnesia
C)source confusion
D)memory consolidation

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

This example demonstrates source confusion, where the eyewitness incorrectly attributes the familiarity of the suspect's face to having seen him commit the crime, rather than the true source, which was seeing his face in the mugshot book earlier.

An Eyewitness from a Crime Is Asked to Look Through