1995 Greater Pittsburgh bank robberies

Inspiration for the Dunning–Kruger effect October 2022 October 2022 On January 6, 1995, McArthur Wheeler and Clifton Earl Johnson robbed two Greater Pittsburgh banks at gunpoint without attempts to disguise themselves. Instead, they had covered their faces in lemon juice, believing it would make them invisible to security cameras. Johnson was arrested a few days later, while Wheeler was apprehended in April after being identified in surveillance photographs. Both received multi-year jail sentences. The robberies directly inspired the research of the Dunning–Kruger effect, which describes that people with little ability in a given field erroneously believe they excel in it. History On January 6, 1995, McArthur WheelerAlso reported as MacArthur Wheeler and Macarthur J. Wheeler and Clifton Earl Johnson robbed two banks in the Greater Pittsburgh area at gunpoint. At 2:47 p.m., at the Swissvale branch of Mellon Bank, one of them stuck up the teller with a semi-automatic handgun while the other waited in line. They left together after obtaining 5,200 1995. The other robbery took place at Fidelity Savings Bank in Brighton Heights. Neither robber wore a mask or otherwise attempted to disguise himself; they had instead applied lemon juice to their faces. According to Wheeler, Johnson had told him lemon juice would make one invisible to security cameras, akin to how it functions as invisible ink. Although initially skeptical, Wheeler had tested this method by covering his face with lemon juice and capturing an image of it with a Polaroid camera. As he was missing from the resulting photograph, he trusted the method to be effective. Detectives believed his absence in the image was caused either by a bad film, a maladjusted camera, or Wheeler having unintentionally pointed the camera away from his face. Johnson was arrested on January 12. A surveillance photograph of Wheeler was broadcast as part of a Pittsburgh Crime Stoppers segment with the 11:00 p.m. news on April 19. Anonymous tips subsequently led to Wheeler's arrest at 12:10 a.m. on April 20, less than an hour after the broadcast. When shown the photographs in which he had been identified, Wheeler was shocked and exclaimed "But I wore the lemon juice. I wore the lemon juice." Johnson pleaded guilty to the heist at Mellon Bank as well as two unrelated robberies from 1994. He testified against Wheeler and was given a five-year prison sentence on October 27. Judge Gary L. Lancaster sentenced Wheeler to 24 1 2 years in prison, followed by three years of probation, on January 5, 1996, for the Swissvale stickup. Charges for the Brighton Heights case were dropped. Dunning–Kruger effect A brief account of the robberies was included in the 1996 edition of The World Almanac. David Dunning, a professor of social psychology at Cornell University, discovered this story and subsequently a longer article about the case in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The New York Times summized he came to believe that "If Wheeler was too stupid to be a bank robber, perhaps he was also too stupid to know that he was too stupid to be a bank robber — that is, his stupidity protected him from an awareness of his own stupidity." With his graduate student Justin Kruger, he organized a research program to determine whether someone's perceived competence could be measured against their actual competence. They authored the 1999 paper "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments", in which they found that "when people are incompetent in the strategies they adopt to achieve success and satisfaction, they suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it. Instead, like Mr. Wheeler, they are left with the mistaken impression that they are doing just fine." This became known as the Dunning–Kruger effect. Other references in literature R. Lofton Hudson, a pastor and psychologist, argued that Wheeler exhibited a "lack of relational awareness" that normally was found in all humans. According to him, "we mistakenly and uncritically believe in our relational skill set when in reality those skills may be no more effective than Mr. Wheeler's special cream." In motivational literature, There Is an I in Team: What Elite Athletes and Coaches Really Know About High Performance features Wheeler as an example of the importance of critical and accurate self-examination. Wheeler's failure to understand his performance deficit was used as an argument for performance pay for teachers by an education policy think-tank. The case also became a thought experiment for criminologists to consider as an example of their incompetence. Notes References https://www.nature.com/articles/s41415-023-5795-8 Lemon juice Shaun Sellars April 28, 2023 British Dental Journal 234 8 559 10.1038/s41415-023-5795-8 Nature January 28, 2024 January 28, 2024 https://web.archive.org/web/20240128113834/https://www.nature.com/articles/s41415-023-5795-8 live https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/stupidity-for-dummies Stupidity for dummies Richard Fisher February 14, 2014 British GQ October 16, 2022 May 11, 2021 https://web.archive.org/web/20210511201249/https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/stupidity-for-dummies live https://www.newspapers.com/clip/111378933/lemon-juice-didnt-work-robber-jailed/ Lemon juice didn't work; robber jailed Centre Daily Times January 7, 1996 7A Newspapers.com October 16, 2022 October 16, 2022 https://web.archive.org/web/20221016020645/https://www.newspapers.com/clip/111378933/lemon-juice-didnt-work-robber-jailed/ live https://books.google.com/books?id=p_Min5hZx2IC There Is an I in Team: What Elite Athletes and Coaches Really Know About High Performance Mark de Rond December 30, 2013 Harvard Business Press 978-1-4221-8397-7 15 Google Books October 16, 2022 October 16, 2022 https://web.archive.org/web/20221016020714/https://books.google.com/books?id=p_Min5hZx2IC live https://classic.cn.edu/libraries/tiny_mce/tiny_mce/plugins/filemanager/files/library/Carson_Newman_Studies/6-v10n4_2005.pdf How Are the People Around You Doing? Mark A. Heinrich Don H. Sr. Olive Michael E. Arrington 2005 Carson-Newman Studies 10 4 1–7 1081-7727 October 16, 2022 October 16, 2022 https://web.archive.org/web/20221016020713/https://classic.cn.edu/libraries/tiny_mce/tiny_mce/plugins/filemanager/files/library/Carson_Newman_Studies/6-v10n4_2005.pdf dead Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments Justin Kruger Justin Kruger David Dunning David Dunning Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1999 77 6 1121–1134 10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1121 10626367 2109278 https://books.google.com/books?id=5P7H5kdyDnoC Profiling and Serial Crime: Theoretical and Practical Issues Wayne Petherick December 2, 2012 Newnes 978-0-12-405901-6 225 Google Books October 16, 2022 October 16, 2022 https://web.archive.org/web/20221016020715/https://books.google.com/books?id=5P7H5kdyDnoC live https://www.newspapers.com/clip/109931339/swissvale-bank-robbed/ Swissvale bank robbed Pittsburgh Post-Gazette January 7, 1995 B-4 Newspapers.com October 16, 2022 October 16, 2022 https://web.archive.org/web/20221016020715/https://www.newspapers.com/clip/109931339/swissvale-bank-robbed/ live https://www.newspapers.com/clip/109930926/robber-is-sentenced/ Robber is sentenced Pittsburgh Post-Gazette October 28, 1995 C-2 Newspapers.com October 16, 2022 October 16, 2022 https://web.archive.org/web/20221016020716/https://www.newspapers.com/clip/109930926/robber-is-sentenced/ live https://www.newspapers.com/clip/73185038/dumb1/ Trial & error Michael A. Fuoco Pittsburgh Post-Gazette March 21, 1996 D-1 Newspapers.com October 16, 2022 July 25, 2021 https://web.archive.org/web/20210725095408/https://www.newspapers.com/clip/73185038/dumb1/ live https://books.google.com/books?id=MfsnDwAAQBAJ Improving Student Achievement: Reforms that Work Lewis C. Solmon Kimberly Firetag Agam Tamara W. Schiff January 1, 2005 Information Age Publishing 978-1-59311-352-0 141 Google Books October 16, 2022 October 16, 2022 https://web.archive.org/web/20221016020716/https://books.google.com/books?id=MfsnDwAAQBAJ live https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/the-anosognosics-dilemma-1/ The Anosognosic's Dilemma: Something's Wrong but You'll Never Know What It Is (Part 1) Errol Morris Errol Morris June 20, 2010 The New York Times October 16, 2022 August 27, 2022 https://web.archive.org/web/20220827145320/https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/the-anosognosics-dilemma-1/ live Category:1990s crimes in Pennsylvania Category:1990s in Pittsburgh Category:1995 in Pennsylvania Category:Attacks on buildings and structures in 1995 Category:Attacks on buildings and structures in Pennsylvania Category:Bank robberies in the United States Category:January 1995 crimes Category:January 1995 in the United States