Have you ever spotted someone familiar in a crowd of strangers, or seen a very familiar face? Even though they're wearing a mask and perhaps sunglasses, you still recognize them. Have you ever wondered why?

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You may meet countless people in your lifetime, but few people will remember their faces years later. However, the ability to recognize faces is innate.

Scholars believe this ability evolved over millions of years and is unaffected by masks, sunglasses, and other factors.

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Three cognitive psychology lecturers from the Universities of Reading, Lincoln, and Huddersfield in the UK conducted an experiment, which was published on the Royal Society Public Website.

Researchers asked volunteers to compare two paired standard portraits to determine whether they were the same person. One was a normal headshot, with no facial obstruction; the other could be completely or partially obscured, or wearing a mask or sunglasses.

The photos included both well-known celebrities and randomly selected strangers.

Other

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Bob Dylan, Lenny Kravitz, Yoko Ono. Recognized them all?

The results showed that for celebrities and well-known figures, recognition accuracy remained as high as 90% even when they were wearing masks or sunglasses. However, for unfamiliar faces, recognition accuracy was lower when partially obscured by masks or sunglasses.

Furthermore, regardless of whether masks or sunglasses were worn, recognition of unfamiliar faces was more difficult and prone to errors.

The authors point out that in real-world settings, facial recognition accuracy is higher when body language, clothing, eye contact, and other features are combined in addition to limited facial features.

Innate

The next question is, since masks, sunglasses, and the like have little effect on facial recognition, what then allows us to recognize familiar faces?

Humans have an innate preference for visual stimuli that resemble faces, such as sometimes seeing a face in clouds or nearby objects. Psychologists call this a facial pareidolia, also known as a pareidolia.

Andy Warhol

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This is a famous pop artist... Oh, and Andy Warhol, who often wears sunglasses to formal events, looking effortlessly at ease among a crowd of tuxedos and black ties.

This is a famous pop artist... Oh, and Andy Warhol, who often wears sunglasses to formal events, looking effortlessly at ease among a crowd of tuxedos and black ties.

One explanation is that facial recognition evolved as a skill in humans as they adapted to their living environment. In ancient times, being able to recognize the faces of friends and enemies would have provided an additional layer of survival security.

The ability to recognize familiar faces can be attributed to two factors: knowing how the same face looks different in different contexts, and knowing how a face differs from other familiar faces.

Recognizing unfamiliar faces is more difficult because memory lacks reference points, such as demeanor, expression, skin tone, color, contrast, and other facial features.

However, for familiar faces, even when wearing a mask, the exposed portion still provides sufficient visual information to compare with the information in memory and form a conclusion based on identification.

The eyes are the windows to the soul and can also be the culprit in revealing one's identity. Ocular features provide crucial information for facial recognition, from shape and color to the distance between the eyes, the position of the eyebrows, and the expression in the eyes.

Nigel Holt, a psychology professor at Aberystwyth University in the UK, explains that the human brain is naturally wired to capture information from the eyes. This information reveals the mental and emotional state of the eye's owner and serves as a visual stimulus for facial recognition.

Since facial recognition is an innate ability, its strength varies from person to person. Some people are exceptionally skilled at recognizing faces and possess a photographic memory, while others are not far removed from face blindness.

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Silvio Burlesconi

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"Super Face Recognizers"

The phenomenon of "super face recognizers" has been extensively studied over the past few decades. Since 2009, the UK has used the Cambridge Face Memory Test to assess facial recognition and identify "super face recognizers."

In recent years, other related assessments have been added, such as the ability to identify two identical faces among different unfamiliar faces (a skill that border control officers at ports of entry must meet to a certain standard).

Research has found that people with exceptional facial recognition abilities excel in two areas: remembering a face they've seen before and accurately identifying it in a standard profile photo; and determining whether two strangers' profile photos are the same person.

The study also found that these abilities appear to be genetically linked and are limited to facial recognition.

Students wearing masks

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What about other ethnic groups?

So far, no "superpowers" have been found in cross-ethnic facial recognition. This suggests that superface recognizers are simply slightly better at facial recognition than others, not possessing a special ability.

This has also become a new research topic in academia.

Psychologists have determined that recognizing faces of different ethnicities is significantly more challenging than recognizing faces of the same ethnicity.

A study by Professor Josh Davis of the Facial and Voice Recognition Laboratory at the University of Greenwich in the UK found that wearing masks and sunglasses also reduced the recognition accuracy of "superface recognizers," but their overall performance was significantly higher than that of ordinary volunteers.

A study conducted by the University of Strathclyde and the University of Greenwich in the UK and Qatar University in the Middle East found that white people with exceptional facial recognition abilities outperformed average white people when identifying Caucasian, Egyptian, and Asian faces. However, they performed worse than average Egyptian and Asian observers when identifying Egyptian and Asian faces.

Other similar studies have yielded similar results.

Academia hopes that more research and data will inform policy decisions regarding "gifted" individuals and the use of computer facial recognition technology.