Face-blindness is greater in reality than on tests

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I score in the average range on those face-recognition tests, largely because I've psyched out the tests and have taught myself how to beat their system by memorizing specific features from each face using intense concentration rather than by "recognizing" a face. I don't do well, but I score well.

In real life, things are a lot harder. Face-recognition tests vary the angle of each face, but don't vary the facial expression, hairstyle, glasses, makeup, etc. It's futile to memorize most facial features because they can be changed easily. Eyebrows can be plucked, lips can be lipsticked, hair can be styled, etc.

Also, I experience so much anxiety and my attention is so taken up by trying to behave "correctly" when I meet people, that I retain no memory of their face. I don't have the luxury of staring at their face to memorize a feature, like I'd do in a facial recognition test.

I don't think facial recognition tests take these very serious discrepancies into account. This is why I'm horrible at recognizing people in real life, but do very well on those tests.

I think you're right. As you mention we can focus on specific traits, and also there is the fact that we just saw the faces a few seconds ago so it helps with remembering them. I think I did a lot better on that test then I would in reality, I don't have a problem recognizing people I see often tho, but I do with people I have seen only a few times or haven't seen in a while.

Same here... I've done pretty well on the tests, but in real life my face-blindness is so severe I've lost friends because of it.

I definitely agree with you. I did a test a couple of weeks back and actually got a bit over the average score; but in my real life, I am awful at it. I think one of the things that got me was that on the internet, when given a face to look at for a period of time, I would stare at it intensely and memorize key features of the face. In my real life, when I meet people I tend not to look at their face very much (which is probably why I don't remember it at a later date), because eye contact makes me feel uncomfortable and also I don't want them to think that I am staring at them. And for me to memorise something like that, I have to actually make an active attempt at it; for facial features, that would mean staring intensely and focusing on different individual features and sort of imprinting them on my mind. This would be totally impractical for my day to day life. I would look really odd if I went around doing that...

This face blindness concept bothers me a lot. I know that some people can be face blind and have trouble recognizing some people. But it's not my case.

I agree with the real-time problem. In my case, I feel a disconnection between ME when I am alone and imagining talking to someone and ME interacting live. I feel like if I just loosing something when I start interacting live. I feel I'm not exactly the same person.

In that partial awareness state of live interaction, I have the impression I get all the signals, but so much and so disorganized I know I have to drop 90% of them and I drop what seem irrelevant to what I say and what I hear. And if you don't train, body and facial expressions go down the drain. In my case "Face Blindness" is a mistake, I'm not face blind.

Now I do get some clues when people behave in a certain way while they talk, and I know I can notice, take into account and tune what I think. The reason is that right before I start interacting with someone I trigger my daydreaming mode and I load the closest dummy I can possibly have of the person I start talking to.
I don't actively manage my dummy collection, I could associate a person with an actor who had a supporting role in I film I saw 2 years ago, just because the person looks or walks the same way. And this helped me a lot. During the conversation I keep a point of reference and it's much easier to notice the differences. I then alter the dummy in real time and some obvious inconsistencies appear. Those inconsistencies lead my conversation and feed my interest into carrying on the conversation. I still do feel I get only 10% of the conversation, but, I get a very different sample. Every interaction can lead to a new version of a dummy, dummy exchange on the fly and so on. I create dummies of people I know well and reuse them every time.

It's effortless, dummies are always extremely fragmented (the shy nerd, the arm waving Italian, the grumpy old guy, the nice old lady...) the only thing I do is to keep a coherence in every single one of them, mostly when I talk. It is extremely efficient, because I suppose this is what NT do all the time without knowing it.
I'm pretty sure of this. One reason is because people mime unconsciously some well known traits that express something they like or something they would like to be. The second reason is that they are recognized according to these traits, and they are considered as such during an interaction.

The unique advantage given by my technique is that I can go behind the scene naturally and, if I am gentle, most of the people are grateful to be are recognized as something beyond their appearance. Everybody trusted me, everybody considered me as their best friend. I understood everyone but myself, nobody understood me... perfect recipe for a disaster.

/nods head.

I know exactly what you mean, especially the part about the anxiety and concentrating on behaving "correctly".

And BTW Molly, you have the cutest screen name on this forum!

That's exactly what I thought when I took the test, because it in no way mimics reality. I never recognize people on the street, and often I can't tell people apart in reality. But I scored average on the test, because they are just still images and I purposely concentrate on the images during the test. I think it would be interesting to create a test using videos of people talking and in different settings and having to recognize them that way. We would have a much more difficult time with that, I think.