Never forget a face

[differenceblog]

Who remembers faces better? Horgan et al. (2004) suspected it would be women, because of their "greater interpersonal orientation", and in the five experiments they ran, women did score better. There seemed to be a tendency for both men and women to more accurately recall a woman's appearance, but this was not statistically significant in all

Comments

[astrogeek01]

What do they mean by "face recognition"? That you can say "yes I've seen that face before"?

I'm horrible with remembering my students; they all look alike for some reason. Actually this semester is better than most. But usually I just cannot put names and faces together, and if I see one of them out in the "wild" I'm not even likely to recognize that they're one of my students. *shamed* I inherited this from my mom, I believe, she's also horrible at it. ;) My dad on the other hand is really good at it.

Actually, I think I have good "hair" recognition. The problem is that people change their hair too often. ;)

[lauradi7]

I think it's genetic, not gender related. My father is amazingly good at it. Several years ago when we were visiting, he stoppped in at an unfamiliar supermarket to get a gallon of milk. When we met up, he remarked that he was glad he did so, because he'd bumped into someone he hadn't seen since high school. I said "you recognized someone you haven't seen in 60 years?" He said yes, and didn't seem to think it was odd. I'm not that good, but I think I'm better than many people. My husband is terrible at it.

[leahzero]

The female advantage in face recognition is probably more related to being able to accurately recognize one's own young rather than any vague "greater [facility for] interpersonal relation" stuff. IMO.

[differenceblog]

While that's certainly possible, it strikes me as odd that men are more deeply affected by resemblance-to-self in children's faces than women.