Face Blindness

On the first day of class, we learned about something that really stuck out to me; face blindness. Prosopagnosia, the scientific term for face blindness, is an impairment in which a person cannot recognize faces. This impairment ranges from mild to severe. Some people have a hard time recognizing people they met the day before or celebrities, while others have a hard time recognizing family, friends, spouses, and even themselves.

                This topic stuck out to me because I always thought I was bad at remembering people, but I always blamed it on having a bad memory when it came to that kind of stuff; I didn’t know there was an actual term for it. When I meet someone, unless we had an instant connection about something, I will most likely be unsure if it’s them if I see them the next day in passing. After I hang out with them for a day or so and get to know them better, then I am more confident in recognizing them.

                I felt like maybe I had a mild case of face blindness, so I decided to take the test. I scored a 65%, while the average person with normal face recognition scores about an 85%. I feel like the test was somewhat difficult, because it had a lot of celebrities and political people that I don’t see on a daily basis. I sent the link to the test to some of my friends, because they seemed interested in taking it also.