In 1995, McArthur Wheeler, a 44-year-old man from Pittsburgh, carried out a bizarre bank robbery that would later become famous for its psychological implications.Believing that lemon juice could render him invisible, Wheeler smeared it on his face before robbing two banks.He did not wear a mask and even looked directly at security cameras.When the police arrested him later that night, Wheeler was shocked to find that he had been captured on camera, insisting, “But I wore the juice.

” His belief was based on a misunderstanding of chemistry: lemon juice can act as invisible ink, only visible when heated, not as a way to evade cameras.

Wheeler’s attempt to test this theory with a Polaroid selfie failed because he photographed the ceiling instead, which he interpreted as proof that the juice worked.The incident caught the attention of psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger at Cornell University.They studied how Wheeler’s extreme overconfidence, despite his incompetence, exemplified a cognitive bias now known as the Dunning–Kruger Effect.This effect highlights how individuals with limited knowledge or skill in a task can vastly overestimate their own abilities.

Wheeler’s unusual crime, while humorous on the surface, played a significant role in advancing psychological research and understanding human cognition.