On January 6, 1995, McArthur Wheeler and Clifton Earl Johnson robbed two

Greater Pittsburgh Greater Pittsburgh is the metropolitan area surrounding the city of Pittsburgh in Western Pennsylvania, United States. The region includes Allegheny County, Pittsburgh's urban core county and economic hub, and seven adjacent Pennsylvania cou ...

banks at gunpoint without attempts to disguise themselves. Instead, they had covered their faces in

lemon juice The lemon (''Citrus'' × ''limon'') is a species of small evergreen tree in the ''Citrus'' genus of the flowering plant family Rutaceae. A true lemon is a hybrid of the citron and the bitter orange. Its origins are uncertain, but some ...

, believing it would make them invisible to

security camera A closed-circuit television camera is a type of surveillance camera that transmits video signals to a specific set of monitors or video recording devices, rather than broadcasting the video over public airwaves. The term "closed-circuit televisi ...

s. 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 The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities. It was first described by the psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999. Some researcher ...

, which describes that people with little ability in a given field erroneously believe they excel in it.

History

On January 6, 1995, McArthur Wheeler and Clifton Earl Johnson robbed two banks in the

area at gunpoint. At 2:47 p.m., at the

Swissvale Swissvale is a borough in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, east of downtown Pittsburgh. Named for a farmstead owned by James Swisshelm, during the industrial age it was the site of the Union Switch and Signal Company of George We ...

branch of

Mellon Bank Mellon Financial Corporation was an American investment firm which was once one of the world's largest money management firms. Based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, it was in the business of institutional and high-net-worth individual asset manage ...

, one of them stuck up the teller with a semi-automatic handgun while the other waited in line. They left together after obtaining . The other robbery took place at Fidelity Savings Bank in Brighton Heights. Neither robber wore a mask or otherwise attempted to disguise themselves, having instead applied

to their faces. According to Wheeler, Johnson had told him lemon juice would make one invisible to

s, akin to how it functions as

invisible ink Invisible ink, also known as security ink or sympathetic ink, is a substance used for writing, which is invisible either on application or soon thereafter, and can later be made visible by some means, such as heat or ultraviolet light. Invisibl ...

. 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 Polaroid may refer to: * Polaroid Corporation, an American company known for its instant film and cameras * Polaroid camera, a brand of instant camera formerly produced by Polaroid Corporation * Polaroid film, instant film, and photographs * Polaro ...

. 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 film, also known as a movie or motion picture, is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally, sinc ...

, 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 years in prison, followed by three years of

probation Probation in criminal law is a period of supervision over an offence (law), offender, ordered by the court often in lieu of incarceration. In some jurisdictions, the term ''probation'' applies only to community sentences (alternatives to incar ...

, 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 Social psychology is the methodical study of how thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. Although studying many of the same substantive topics as its counterpart in the field ...

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

, discovered this story and subsequently a longer article about the case in the ''

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette The ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'', also known simply as the PG, is the largest newspaper serving Greater Pittsburgh, metropolitan Pittsburgh in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Descended from the ''Pittsburgh Gazette'', established in 1786 as the fi ...

''. 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

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

{{DEFAULTSORT:Greater Pittsburgh bank robberies, 1995 1990s crimes in Pennsylvania 1990s in Pittsburgh 1995 in Pennsylvania Attacks on buildings and structures in 1995 Attacks on buildings and structures in Pennsylvania Bank robberies in the United States January 1995 crimes January 1995 in the United States