While many people pride themselves on never forgetting a face, it’s just not so easy for others. Now researchers at Swansea University are examining why it can also be more difficult for some individuals to recognize the faces of people from racial groups different to their own.
Professor Jeremy Tree and Dr Alex Jones, from the School of Psychology, wanted to find out just how common other ethnicity blindness - or category selective face blindness - really is.
Their findings have just been published by the Journal of Experimental Psychology and they seek to provide new insight into the other-race ethnicity effect.
Professor Tree said: “We have been studying individuals with extremely poor face processing from birth, known as developmental prosopagnosia – akin to a kind of dyslexia for faces - for several years.
“But little has been done about the possibility that, rather than having general face processing problems, some people may be selectively extremely poor when it comes to distinguishing between faces of a different ethnicity. We wanted to see how prevalent it is and what the implications are.”
The study used data from the UK, China, South Korea, Singapore, Japan, Australia and Serbia with Asian and Caucasian participants completing online tests which saw them comparing images of faces, with the distinctive prompts such as hair, jewellery or eyewear removed. Over a series of tests their ability to identify people varied significantly.
Professor Tree explained: “The diversity of individuals’ cognitive ability is far larger than we anticipated. Some people’s day-to-day face processing abilities may be perfectly fine but when it comes to other ethnicities, they experience significant challenges – and this can hve serious real-world consequences.”
For example, in a legal context a difficulty in recognizing other ethnicity faces could lead to mistaken eyewitness identifications, potentially resulting in wrongful convictions.
Also in social and workplace interactions, a person may struggle significantly with recognizing colleagues from different racial backgrounds, in the same way people with prosopagnosia struggle with all faces.
The researchers say understanding these specific challenges can inform policies in both legal and social settings to reduce bias and improve cross-racial interactions.
It is not clear how an individual’s social experiences and environment may shape these abilities, but the research is an important step in improving understanding of how we perceive others.
Professor Tree added: “We also feel this study sheds light on the broader diversity of individuals in the levels of their face recognition abilities, emphasizing the importance of considering individual differences to deepen our understanding of human cognition.
“It is always important to remember that just because a person may struggle with one thing, it doesn’t mean they won’t be good at something else. It is this variability that we wanted to highlight.”
Find out more about our previous research into face blindness at Face Research Swansea