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Are you good at recognizing faces? Can you recognize someone in a crowd months or years after you talked to someone for a brief period?
Are you one who never forgets a face? If so, you may be a super-recognizer.
Scientists have developed a test for you to find out.
I took the test, and alas, I am not a super-recognizer from my results. I scored 7 out 14.
What did you score? Are you gifted in recognizing faces? Do tell!
As Westerners, when we look at people from the East, we often struggle to identify different nationalities. It’s more challenging for us to identify Taiwanese features and distinguish them from say Japanese or Vietnamese features. It’s even difficult at times to distinguish the differences in facial subtleties of people of the same nationality.
But have you ever wondered if we are equally as challenging to read to Easterners?
We actually are more challenging for them to differentiate for them, too!
Does this surprise you?
If you want the answers to this test given on the video, click over to the YouTube video and the answers are in the text below the video.
Do you find this interesting?
It’s much like meeting a foreigner. You assume “they” have an accent, right? When in reality you BOTH have an accent to each other.
Thanks to Paul for sharing this!
In a 2009 study from DePauw University, researchers found that how much you smiled as a child and young adult could accurately predict your divorce potential. Check it out.
I find that fascinating because I believe emotional expressions are windows to our soul, and who we are as people. I also believe we are hard-wired to feel certain emotions. I suspect that our facial structure actually predisposes us to feel certain emotions more than others. The reason I say that is people who have what I call a very happy face structure (high check bones, broad smiles, and round faces) are typically happy people. Ask people with these faces next time, and they can’t help but smile! And people with heavy brows often stress and frown more. It’s just the way it is.
People who have droopy outer corners of their eyes will have more of a tendency to feel sadness.
So I absolutely believe people who frown more and smile less are much more likely to have a marriage end in divorce. Do you?
Photo by Amarand Agasi
I am a strong believer that our facial and body features are not randomly created by nature–that each one develops due to influences from different sources (genes, chemicals, hormones, etc) while we are in the womb. I think that is a common belief supported by science, though not deeply understood yet. But I also believe that each of these factors affects not only how we will look, but how we act.
For example, I can tell you that most people with full lips are more compassionate than the average person. Its not 100% predictive as other features can dominate and rule this out, but it is a strong indicator. I have no doubt there will be scientific support for this in the future. Sadly, we are in the infancy stages of understanding the physical/behavioral connection.
Now imagine if we made a deeper correlation. If you have this feature, we know it will cause you this illness.
For example, if you have a crease in your earlobe, you will have a higher risk for heart disease.
Would that surprise you?
It doesn’t surprise me and yes, that is exactly where science is going.
I predict in the future, a doctor will map out our faces as children and will predict our personalities, behavior and high risk illnesses by simply looking at our bodies.
Imagine getting a report back detailing these elements about your child!
Oh how cool it would be to see where the science is in 1000 years!!