Have You Ever Heard of Face Blindness? It’s Far More Common Than You Might Think

Have you ever had trouble recognizing a famous person or thought you knew someone when you didn’t?

Transcript

00:00According to a psychological study from 2012, most of us can recognize the face of someone

00:07we know in under a half second, but not everyone.

00:10Some people have a condition known as developmental prosopagnosia, where they either can't recognize

00:15familiar faces as quickly, or the faces of strangers look remarkably familiar.

00:19It was long believed to be a relatively rare occurrence, but now a new Harvard study suggests

00:23it might be more common than previously thought.

00:26Looking at 3,100 participants in the U.S., researchers found that not only does face

00:30blindness affect some 3% of people, but the condition isn't as simple as you have it or

00:34you don't.

00:35It's likely more of a spectrum, with the researchers writing, quote, First, the majority of researchers

00:39have used overly strict diagnostic criteria, and many individuals with significant face

00:44recognition problems in daily life have been wrongly told they do not have prosopagnosia.

00:48If this experiment's results are extrapolated to the entire U.S. population, that means

00:52around 10 million Americans have difficulty with recognizing faces, not a small number,

00:57and other researchers seem to agree.

00:59A 2022 study also suggested relaxing the criteria for the diagnosis of face blindness, suggesting

01:04that identifying more people with this difficulty could lead to better cognitive training and

01:09treatments.