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Mini: How Many Faces Can You Remember? · Why We Do What We Do

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to Why we Do what we do. Welcome
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: to Why we do what we do?
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  Speaker 2: Mini.
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  Speaker 1: I am your host Abraham and I'm Shane. We are
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  Speaker 1: a psychology podcast. We talk about the things that humans
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  Speaker 1: and non human animals do, and sometimes we talk about
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  Speaker 1: proclivities that we have as a species that stand out
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  Speaker 1: as being like kind of impressive that we can do
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  Speaker 1: those things.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, and so today we're talking about faces and how
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  Speaker 3: much I like your face.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's only part that's only half right. Yeah, although
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  Speaker 1: I guess you could do the second part two. So
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  Speaker 1: these are manyas we come out on Mondays. These are
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  Speaker 1: short form discussions where we do a quick dive into
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  Speaker 1: a topic and then we get out of there and
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  Speaker 1: can do justice too in like fifteen minutes or less.
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  Speaker 1: will be short, it will be long. But this one
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  Speaker 1: is short. I think it'll be short. I think we'll
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  Speaker 1: do it in under fifteen. Maybe we'll even clock it
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  Speaker 1: around ten. But just to pad out the run time
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  Speaker 1: on this a little bit, I will say thank you.
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  Speaker 1: elaborate on those a little bit at the end here.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: I think that is what we have to say before
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  Speaker 1: we launch into our topic. Our full length episodes come
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  Speaker 1: out on Wednesdays, if I didn't say that already, and
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  Speaker 1: this is a mini which is out on Monday, which
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  Speaker 1: is hopefully when you're hearing it, but if not, then.
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  Speaker 2: Whenever you hear it, good for you. I hope you
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  Speaker 2: enjoy it. I think that's it. So we're ready to
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  Speaker 2: dive in.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, let's do it.
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  Speaker 2: Okay.
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  Speaker 1: Many of us people, we report that we struggle to
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  Speaker 1: remember names, very common experience, and that's not what we're
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  Speaker 1: talking about. What we're talking about is that many of
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  Speaker 1: us are, actually most of us are pretty good at
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  Speaker 1: remembering faces. We will recognize faces very very well most
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  Speaker 1: of the time for most people, not all of us,
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  Speaker 1: and we'll talk about that. But for a lot of us,
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  Speaker 1: we like, I know that person, I've seen them before
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  Speaker 1: for and it turns.
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  Speaker 3: Out this might be a specifically human thing, or maybe
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  Speaker 3: a cultural thing, or maybe a combination to the two.
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  Speaker 3: So we can unpack this briefly, since this is a
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  Speaker 3: mini and we're gonna get down to the answers of
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  Speaker 3: why we can remember so many faces.
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  Speaker 1: And how many we can remember because humans can recognize
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  Speaker 1: a lot a lot of faces and even recognize them
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  Speaker 1: after having not interacted with them for like a very
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  Speaker 1: long time.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So this is largely based off of a study that
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  Speaker 1: was done that was like, this has been cited all
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  Speaker 1: over the place.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. So a twenty eighteen study in the
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  Speaker 3: Proceedings of the Royal Society B which just rolls off
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  Speaker 3: the tongue, Yeah, shows thousands of faces to twenty five participants.
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  Speaker 3: If a participant could recognize the face twice, it was
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  Speaker 3: counted as recognized. Otherwise it was considered unrecognized.
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  Speaker 1: So they essentially just then counted up how many faces
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  Speaker 1: people could recognize. The lowest performer or performers recog about
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  Speaker 1: one thousand faces of all the ones that they were
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  Speaker 1: presented with. A thousand, Like, that's already a pretty big number.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: The highest performers recognized upwards of ten thousand faces. Ten thousand,
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  Speaker 1: that is ten times.
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  Speaker 2: More than a thousand.
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  Speaker 3: That's a lot of faces.
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  Speaker 2: That's so many.
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  Speaker 1: Most people averaged around five thousand faces, which is still
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  Speaker 1: a huge amount of faces. That's just so so many.
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  Speaker 3: That's several faces. At least, it's so many.
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  Speaker 2: That's more than one.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's at least more than one. Now, researchers did
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  Speaker 3: accept the self reported recognition from the participants, so it
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  Speaker 3: is possible that there was some bias in their answers.
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  Speaker 3: And further, it is unclear if the super recognizers could
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  Speaker 3: go above ten thousand and how high they could actually go.
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  Speaker 3: So there was kind of like the self report comfound
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  Speaker 3: and there was also the upper limit of the ten
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  Speaker 3: thousand that we really don't know how far they could go.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw some I feel like I heard the
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  Speaker 1: researchers in like oppress briefing or something specifically allude to
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  Speaker 1: the fact that like they don't know if there's an
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  Speaker 1: upper limit and what that upper limit is. Like the further,
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  Speaker 1: super recognizers, like most people, it seemed like on average,
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  Speaker 1: we're sort of capping out around five thousand faces, but
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  Speaker 1: there are people where it's like they might just they
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  Speaker 1: might recognize as many faces as they ever encounter in
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  Speaker 1: a lifetime. Yeah, because that good. Now, one thing they
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  Speaker 1: did find is that familiarity helped a lot, Like if
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  Speaker 1: they were kind of already knew that face. That is,
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  Speaker 1: if the participman already knew the face, they were quicker
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  Speaker 1: and more likely to recognize that same face later because
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  Speaker 1: they did use like a lot of celebrity pictures in here.
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  Speaker 1: And Further, people who grew up in large urban areas
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  Speaker 1: also tended to be stronger recognizing faces. And I think
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  Speaker 1: it makes sense because these are people who are around
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  Speaker 1: a lot more diverse faces a lot more of the time.
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  Speaker 1: So whatever sort of muscle is being flexed here, they
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  Speaker 1: were using that muscle a lot by sheer opportunity as
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  Speaker 1: you know, kind of alone.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, that makes sense. I would imagine growing up in
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  Speaker 3: urban areas too, Like you're probably exposed to a ton
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  Speaker 3: of ads, Like there's probably billboards everywhere, and like, you know,
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  Speaker 3: the posters that are on the subways and stuff. So like,
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  Speaker 3: I bet they're pretty good at recognizing those two just
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  Speaker 3: like this one.
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  Speaker 1: All right, we're back. We're still talking about faces. Let's
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  Speaker 1: see if we can understand why we're so good at faces.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, so neural just love to point to the parts
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  Speaker 3: of the brain that average greater blood flow when looking
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  Speaker 3: at faces and point out that we seem to have
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  Speaker 3: a specialized region for facial recognition. Indeed, we may also
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  Speaker 3: struggle to tell non human animals faces apart, or at
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  Speaker 3: least struggle to do so as easily as we do
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  Speaker 3: with humans. But you know, we could still recognize some
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  Speaker 3: animal faces.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, Like when exposed enough to certain animal faces,
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  Speaker 1: we start to be able to tell those animal faces
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  Speaker 1: apart from other animals of the same species, but without
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  Speaker 1: that amount of time, Like we can see a face
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  Speaker 1: once and be likely to recognize it later, versus with animals,
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  Speaker 1: we might have to be around them for a long
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  Speaker 1: time to actually be able to pick them apart from
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  Speaker 1: other animals.
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  Speaker 2: Yea, and even then we.
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  Speaker 1: Might still struggle if they look pretty similar. So that
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  Speaker 1: is the thing now understanding. The neurologists point here that
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  Speaker 1: they see aggregated blood flow more in particular areas when
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  Speaker 1: doing facial recognition tasks, and that's fine, that's the case,
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  Speaker 1: that's what they found.
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  Speaker 2: At least.
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  Speaker 1: It is worth considering also that like we're exposed to
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  Speaker 1: faces in social and emotional situations for the most important
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  Speaker 1: parts of our lives and our survival from birth and onward.
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  Speaker 1: So like the moment we come into this world, we're
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  Speaker 1: basically oriented toward and surrounded by faces, and those faces
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  Speaker 1: are necessary for our well being and survival and comfort,
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  Speaker 1: and so we get a lot, a lot of practice
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  Speaker 1: pretty much immediately. We start looking at faces most of
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  Speaker 1: our lives, even before we're asked to then try and
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  Speaker 1: remember faces for an experiment.
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  Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, that makes sense. I mean almost everybody encounter
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  Speaker 3: growing up as a face almost almost. Yeah, there's always
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  Speaker 3: an exception to the rule. Now, there are also people
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  Speaker 3: who struggle to recognize any faces, and this is called
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  Speaker 3: prosopagnosia prosopagnosia prosopagnosia obviously or face blindness.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, so like it's not universal. There are people for
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  Speaker 1: whom this is not something that they can do very easily.
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  Speaker 1: And that is actually a thing I've had on the
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  Speaker 1: list to talk about for a long time, as prosopagnosia
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  Speaker 1: and other like ephasia type things that people experience. But anyway,
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  Speaker 1: that is a thing that is as true. But I
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  Speaker 1: think it's fair to say, like we have certainly evolved
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  Speaker 1: to be a highly social creature whose survival depends on
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  Speaker 1: cooperation and group support. Being able to recognize at least
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  Speaker 1: five thousand different faces is probably like overkill from an
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  Speaker 1: evolutionary perspective, but like, sure, we get what we get,
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  Speaker 1: and evolution produced the kind of eyes, brains, and behaviors
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  Speaker 1: that we have, So like that's you know, we ended
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  Speaker 1: up in this space as a product of evolution. It's
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  Speaker 1: a thing that we can do, and it's definitely beneficial
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  Speaker 1: for us, who are a very highly social creature, to
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  Speaker 1: be able to do it. But yeah, I was just impressed,
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  Speaker 1: Like five or ten thousand faces, that's so many. But
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  Speaker 1: it does seem like, first of all, as I said,
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  Speaker 1: we do this all all all the time. And second
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  Speaker 1: like we are a cooperative species that depend on one
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  Speaker 1: another for our survival and well being. And so even
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  Speaker 1: though it doesn't feel that way, sometimes, particularly when you
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  Speaker 1: have clowns who can go into power and tell us
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  Speaker 1: that we should all be afraid of one another and
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  Speaker 1: they're stupid and wrong, they might convince us that humans
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  Speaker 1: are combative and they fight each other. And like, obviously
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  Speaker 1: history has shown that we do fight each other in
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  Speaker 1: many instances, but that's largely because the stupid people who
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  Speaker 1: get into power and tell us that we should If
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  Speaker 1: the smart people were in power, then we probably wouldn't
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  Speaker 1: need to fight, because why would we. We're species trying
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  Speaker 1: to survive and support the well being of our species.
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  Speaker 1: So assuming that we could get on the same page
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  Speaker 1: about that, at some point, we would probably not have
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  Speaker 1: to have things like killing each other be a problem.
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  Speaker 1: But anyway, that is getting way off on the side tangent,
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  Speaker 1: which I knew would happen in any kind of format,
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  Speaker 1: let alone a mini where I'm supposed to be constrained.
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  Speaker 1: Point is, we are social. Therefore we are good at faces.
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  Speaker 1: We seem like we're biologically prepared to be very good
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  Speaker 1: at faces, and we spend pretty much our entire lives
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  Speaker 1: doing good facial recognition stuff.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Perfect, I think we nailed it. Okay, we solved faces.
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  Speaker 1: We solved it, We solved the faces, all right, perfect? Well, great,
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  Speaker 1: glad we came in a reasonable amount of time on
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  Speaker 1: that one. Is there anything that I miss or you'd
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  Speaker 2: No, I don't think so. Great.
• 9:33
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  Speaker 3: That's fun.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: You can just hear that blank spot exactly.
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• 10:46
  Speaker 1: so much to my team of people who help make
• 10:48
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• 10:51
  Speaker 1: Thank you for recording with me today, Shane anytime. Our
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: social media coordinator is Emma Wilson, and our audio engineer
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  Speaker 1: technician person who does all the good sounds is thank
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: you justin Yes, we love him and Emma, thank you
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: all for listening. I think that is what we have
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: to say before and then we can wrap this one up.
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  Speaker 2: Is there anything you'd like to add? Nope?
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  Speaker 1: All right, go out and look at faces. This is Abraham,
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: this is Shane.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: Why we do what we Do? Mini is out. Bye.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: You've been listening to Why We Do what We Do.
• 11:19
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• 11:22
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• 11:26
  Speaker 3: Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an awesome
• 11:28
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