recognizing faces

[kaigou]

I recall doing a beta-read for difrancis and tripping over a sub-plot that involved two childhood friends meeting again as adults... and recognizing each other instantly. That, to me, seemed preposterous. Biiiig suspension of disbelief! And bigger for Di herself, when she said she's recognized (as adults) people she knew in second grade. Just. Could. Not. Comprehend.

Oi. I have trouble recognizing coworker faces if our paths cross outside of work, and don't even ask me about faces (or names) of classmates, excepting a handful of really close friends. I've even walked right past my own sister with no recognition at all, when she chopped hair short and bleached it to white. And sure as spit, don't ever call me and think I'll recognize your voice. I've gone blank when my own father calls, for crying out loud. I'm never able to identify who's calling if I don't have caller-ID or some other hint to clue me in.

In person, I rely on things like hair color, length, and style, which means abrupt and extreme hair-style changes will throw me, especially if you're not wearing frequently-worn items like a distinctive coat or pair of shoes. I've learned to look for distinctive gestures and mannerisms, even if that means waiting patiently until someone who I think I should know -- and who acts like they know me -- says or does something that brings the face into sharper focus.

CP sometimes snarks that "all you white people look alike", but to me, pretty much... everyone does look alike. Or maybe I should say: everyone looks different, yes, but everyone looks unfamiliar. I just plain can't recall faces, and I sure as hell can't recall them if they're out of context (ie coworker not at work) or it's been more than about a year (ie old classmate).

Does anyone else do this, or have any similar kind of failure of recognition? I've always wondered if it's just me, or if it's just that everyone else fakes the lack of recognition better than I do.

Comments

[phoebe_zeitgeist]

Interesting that you should mention the 'all you __ look alike' issue. As it happens, the reason I remember the rough date of the New Yorker article is that I had a summons for jury duty around the pub date, and was on a panel being questioned for possible service on a robbery case where one of the issues they were checking for was whether a potential juror might believe that a witness of one race was less likely to be able to accurately identify someone of another race than a witness of the same race would. And two days previously, I'd have told the judge that while I was aware of research showing the unreliability of eyewitness identification in general, I had no reason to think that the race of either witness or person allegedly witnessed would affect the degree of said unreliability.

But it wasn't two days earlier, and I'd seen the article, and I had to consider the possibility that indeed, a racial difference might make that ID even less reliable than it would otherwise be.

You raise a fascinating point about the possible implications of people beginning to find all faces somewhat unfamiliar-looking. I wonder, though, whether we wouldn't have some of the role currently filled by (normal people's) facial recognition skills simply occupied by other tools for physical recognition of familiar people? That is, I'm rotten at faces, but in practice a decent amount of the deficit is made up for by the fact that I do recognize people's ways of moving and of occupying space. I've recognized old friends across long stretches of airport concourse from the back on occasion, and I suspect that many other non-face-seeing people have done the same. Surely that would fill a lot of the same social role?

[kaigou]

I wonder, though, whether we wouldn't have some of the role currently filled by (normal people's) facial recognition skills simply occupied by other tools for physical recognition of familiar people?

Could be, could be. You're right about recognizing people by movement, and now that I think about it, I can recall recognizing people across large gatherings, because of the way the person walks or holds their hands or head or gestures. On the other hand, this reliance on gesture/movement might be one reason I will also frequently mistake one person for another, if similar gestures are in play. (People who've known each other for a really long time will eventually adapt the other's mannerisms to some degree, and that's a fast way to stump me in telling them apart at a quick glance.)

Except... the growing lack of facial recognition might also make it worse, in terms of "assuming all people who look like X must be Y" -- I think it's called heuristics -- because if we're getting worse at recognizing faces, then we need something to go on to know how to interact with a person, at least for that space of time where we're casting about for any recollection of knowing them (or more bluntly, while we're trying to decide whether this unfamiliar person gets our talk-with-friend reaction or our talk-with-stranger reaction). If immediate facial recognition is getting rarer, then I can see the risk of even greater issues of "all you __ look alike" because even the __ who are familiar are, well, no longer familiar. Hence, all alike, and that might make overcoming stereotypes and racial-issue-impressions even harder... in a very convoluted, non-articulate response, there. Sorry.