All faces look the same

[marjaerwin]

I find it immensely frustrating that people expect me to tell people apart by their faces, instead of by their hair, their clothing, their height, and other things which do not look the same. I find it puzzling that people consider the inability to distinguish faces, and the inability to reliably guess someone's feelings from their expressions, to be disabilities. Why don't they consider the inability to levitate R2 units with their minds a disability? The former two are just about as far from plausibility as the latter.

Anyway, BoingBoing has a thing on this.

http://www.boingboing.net/2011/01/06/-video-link-research.html

Comments

[mepha-warp.livejournal.com]

Yes, and faces are also expected to play the primary role in peoples identities. People place so much emphasis on faces that in some attempts to make a "virtual reality world", that the emphasis is all on the face alone. And emotions can be difficult to read specifically because of individual differences. Some people furrow their eyebrows when angry, other people raise their eyebrows upwards which is the opposite. And it can be hard to tell the second from a scared expression.

Also some peoples faces change significantly when they're sad, and some peoples don't. This isn't even mentioning those people who a lot of times look like they would be happy, going off of their face alone even when they aren't. And then there's oh I don't know... Body language, head tilt angle which is different from face related things, the speed at which someone speaks, the clearness or raspy quality of a voice... What color clothing they usually wear. I think hair, height, and clothes definitely are more visible differences than faces.

Hair, weight, and height is why even immediately family members kept getting confused about who was my mother, and who was me. Until she dyed it red, then stopped wearing black clothes so much. I actually have some significant facial similarities to my father but look nothing like him, or my other relatives with similar faces really. Basically: The parent I have a less similar face to people can pretty much tell we're related. The parent I have a more similar face to people don't know unless they're told. So in short, yes faces are to some degree overrated for identifying individuals, even to the point of spotting relatives.