In my experience, the majority of people will describe themselves as “bad at names, but good with faces”. It’s gotten to the point where it’s started to annoy me a bit.
Few people are innately good at remembering names, but there are plenty of clever systems for doing so, most of which involve associating the name/person with something you’ve already committed to memory, or forming a strong visual or emotive cue involving that person which somehow links back to their name.
Ha! I’m good with names and bad with faces. (Seriously, though. I had two friends in High School who, for nearly a year and a half, I thought were the same person, because their names were identical and I never had them in the same class. They weren’t even the same race—one was white and one was Asian.)
You must be using the word “friends” more broadly than I would—I’m not terribly good with faces either¹, but… if I spent a non-trivial amount of time with such people, I would learn to tell them apart from their voices at the very least, and possibly from their body frames, the kinds of things they talk about, their clothing styles, etc.
Well, with strangers’ and casual acquaintances’ faces—I get better if I’ve known someone for a while.
My memory of faces is… compressed. For example, if I’m close to a short white guy with large ears, a small nose and no facial hair, I’ll remember his face pretty well—but every time I meet someone matching the same description, I’ll remember him as having the first guy’s face. So I might not recognize him at all, because I’m comparing his face to a different one, and I certainly won’t tell the two apart. Same thing for voices and body shapes, only worse. I can remember particular items of clothing but not generalize to a style. What they talk about is useful, but not instantaneous.
In college I occasionally mixed up a couple similar looking girls.
I ended up marrying one of them.
It worked out pretty well for me but I don’t think it’s a universally applicable heuristic.
More like “If I can’t keep two people straight, marry one of them. That ought to provide compelling incentives to do so, not to mention ample opportunity for increased familiarity.”
Ha! I also went on a date with someone I had mixed up with his roommate, but it went badly. Took me half the date to catch on. I just thought he was more boring than I remembered.
Nope, I just hid from him for the rest of summer camp, so he wouldn’t try to follow up. I also did not confess: thinking I had the same prof for both my epidemiology classes until Thanksgiving when I found out there were two separate people.
I once was telling my Democratic Rhetoric prof how glad I was I dropped Abstract Algebra and realized mid paragraph I was talking to my Abstract Algebra prof and switched to “because I just don’t have time to do it justice and I think I’ll be able to make time next year.”
I once was telling my Democratic Rhetoric prof how glad I was I dropped Abstract Algebra and realized mid paragraph I was talking to my Abstract Algebra prof and switched to “because I just don’t have time to do it justice and I think I’ll be able to make time next year.”
I haven’t come up with one. I used to mix up my roommate with a coworker and have brief panicky feelings every now and then when I tried to figure out what I’d done that so pissed off my coworker that she was waiting in my living room. But I was pretty good at remembering that statistically it was my roommate.
Strategies I have used that helped:
sending out emails at the beginning of the school year reminding people I’m pretty faceblind and I may not recognize them, esp if they changed their hair. So please introduce yourself when you see me, and, if I’m in a conversation with someone, greet my interlocutor by name
teaching my then-bf fingerspelling and having him drift behind people I’m talking to and spell their names to me
These didn’t make me better long term,but helped a lot to manage the problem.
When meeting multiple people at once, I have personally found it useful to mentally alliterate physical features with names. So if I met Susan (below average height), Lisa (above average height), Bob (above average weight), Sam (below average weight) and Angie (high sharp cheek bones and a very tapered face) I might mentally tag them
-Angular Angie
-Buoyant Bob
-Lengthy Lisa
-Short Susan
-Skinny Sam
When possible, I like to look for opposing pairs of features (short v tall etc.) as binaries seem easier to remember. Sometimes picking a descriptor that fits a binary and gives you alliteration forces you to reach for something that would be poor prose (the first choice to describe a tall person wouldn’t be lengthy).
Although not perfect by any means, I have found this to substantially increase my pickup of new names and my ability to match the name to the physical person using it.
In my experience, the majority of people will describe themselves as “bad at names, but good with faces”. It’s gotten to the point where it’s started to annoy me a bit.
Few people are innately good at remembering names, but there are plenty of clever systems for doing so, most of which involve associating the name/person with something you’ve already committed to memory, or forming a strong visual or emotive cue involving that person which somehow links back to their name.
Ha! I’m good with names and bad with faces. (Seriously, though. I had two friends in High School who, for nearly a year and a half, I thought were the same person, because their names were identical and I never had them in the same class. They weren’t even the same race—one was white and one was Asian.)
That seems a bit extreme. Maybe you have that condition that makes it difficult do distinguish faces?
I have tended to associate with distinctive people, and prefer distinctiveness to attractiveness. Entirely possible.
You must be using the word “friends” more broadly than I would—I’m not terribly good with faces either¹, but… if I spent a non-trivial amount of time with such people, I would learn to tell them apart from their voices at the very least, and possibly from their body frames, the kinds of things they talk about, their clothing styles, etc.
Well, with strangers’ and casual acquaintances’ faces—I get better if I’ve known someone for a while.
My memory of faces is… compressed. For example, if I’m close to a short white guy with large ears, a small nose and no facial hair, I’ll remember his face pretty well—but every time I meet someone matching the same description, I’ll remember him as having the first guy’s face. So I might not recognize him at all, because I’m comparing his face to a different one, and I certainly won’t tell the two apart. Same thing for voices and body shapes, only worse. I can remember particular items of clothing but not generalize to a style. What they talk about is useful, but not instantaneous.
I remember them, but separately—not together. It’s most annoying.
Are there any systems for remembering faces?
In college I occasionally mixed up a couple similar looking girls. I ended up marrying one of them. It worked out pretty well for me but I don’t think it’s a universally applicable heuristic.
So… your system is “if two people look the same, add ‘Am I married to this person?’ as a differentiating criterion”? Welp, new pickup line.
More like “If I can’t keep two people straight, marry one of them. That ought to provide compelling incentives to do so, not to mention ample opportunity for increased familiarity.”
Ha! I also went on a date with someone I had mixed up with his roommate, but it went badly. Took me half the date to catch on. I just thought he was more boring than I remembered.
Wow. Did you confess the mixup or what?
Nope, I just hid from him for the rest of summer camp, so he wouldn’t try to follow up. I also did not confess: thinking I had the same prof for both my epidemiology classes until Thanksgiving when I found out there were two separate people.
I once was telling my Democratic Rhetoric prof how glad I was I dropped Abstract Algebra and realized mid paragraph I was talking to my Abstract Algebra prof and switched to “because I just don’t have time to do it justice and I think I’ll be able to make time next year.”
Oh my...
At least it wasn’t the morning after.
I haven’t come up with one. I used to mix up my roommate with a coworker and have brief panicky feelings every now and then when I tried to figure out what I’d done that so pissed off my coworker that she was waiting in my living room. But I was pretty good at remembering that statistically it was my roommate.
Strategies I have used that helped:
sending out emails at the beginning of the school year reminding people I’m pretty faceblind and I may not recognize them, esp if they changed their hair. So please introduce yourself when you see me, and, if I’m in a conversation with someone, greet my interlocutor by name
teaching my then-bf fingerspelling and having him drift behind people I’m talking to and spell their names to me
These didn’t make me better long term,but helped a lot to manage the problem.
Specifically, is there an encoding system one can apply in real time with usable results?
When meeting multiple people at once, I have personally found it useful to mentally alliterate physical features with names. So if I met Susan (below average height), Lisa (above average height), Bob (above average weight), Sam (below average weight) and Angie (high sharp cheek bones and a very tapered face) I might mentally tag them
-Angular Angie
-Buoyant Bob
-Lengthy Lisa
-Short Susan
-Skinny Sam
When possible, I like to look for opposing pairs of features (short v tall etc.) as binaries seem easier to remember. Sometimes picking a descriptor that fits a binary and gives you alliteration forces you to reach for something that would be poor prose (the first choice to describe a tall person wouldn’t be lengthy). Although not perfect by any means, I have found this to substantially increase my pickup of new names and my ability to match the name to the physical person using it.
Heh. I’m good with both. It’s linking one to the other that gives me trouble.