Amounts to seeing what one expects to see - especially at night. Expecting airport lights, some runway lights appear....
I was in San Juan when a 737 inbound for TJSJ saw the lights of TJIG (the smaller GA airport) right under his nose (but ~8 miles closer) and landed there by mistake. Both have lagoons on short final - runways are 9-27 for TJIG and 8-26 or 10-28 for TJSJ - so again, he saw what he expected to see.
One just has to be willing to always question the obvious and double-check everything (with ATC, GPS, any other information around).