'A lot of people are suffering alone with this' - the invisible pain of face blindness
We've all struggled to recognise someone who seems to know us, but for around 3 percent of people, identifying faces is a lifelong challenge.
People with prosopagnosia - severe facial recognition deficits - have trouble 'learning' a face, and out of context, may even fail to recognise the people closest to them.
Living with the condition is more than just "awkward", says Harvard psychologist Dr Joe DeGutis - it can limit employment opportunities and deliver a big "social cost".
"They have this feeling that if someone doesn't recognise you, they think it says you're not important to them. People think they're aloof, or that people think they're not caring as much. I think that does some damage to them. A lot of people are suffering alone with this," he tells Afternoons.
Neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote about a music teacher with an inability to correctly identify objects in his 1985 book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.
AFP
It's very difficult to understand what's going wrong in the brains of people with prosopagnosia, says DeGutis, who became an expert on the disorder after becoming fascinated by Oliver Sacks' book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.
What we do know is that people with the condition are "less sensitive" when it comes to perceiving the specific details of a face, especially in the eye region.
"[For them] the face is a little bit like Teflon. They can associate information with a voice, but they can't associate very much information with a face."
People with face blindness can be "damaged" by the fear of offending people, says Dr Joe DeGutis.
Getty Images / Unsplash +
At the other end of the spectrum, people known as "super-recognisers" can be so skilled at recognising and identifying faces that they have helped solve CCTV crimes for Scotland Yard, he says.
Along with famous people like Scarlett Johansson and Bill Clinton, Lucie Sullivan is one such "super-recogniser" who, before producing an episode of Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History podcast about prosopagnosia, thought face blindness was an "urban legend".
Just as the inability to recognise faces can be socially awkward, Sullivan says, the powerful ability to remember them has the same potential.
"I worry that I can veer into like, creepy territory because it's like, 'Why are you remembering who I am? We had a conversation once at a party five years ago. I'm like, 'I swear I'm not obsessed with you. I just remember your face because I have this weird thing.'
Marama T Pole has worked in radio broadcasting since the 1990s.
RNZ / Jeff McEwan
RNZ newsreader Marama T-Pole has a workaround for what she describes as an "overconfidence" when it comes to facial recognition.
"I'm driving down the road and I say to my cousin, 'Oh my goodness, there's Mele!' and I start tooting. My cousin's like 'That's not Mele', but the person's already seen me, so that's a bit problematic.
"As I walk down the street and wave to someone as they come closer, I [often] realise that's not [who I thought it was] but you just keep waving at someone behind them."
To get a "rough idea" of whether you have prosopagnosia, Dr Joe DeGutis recommends this Famous Face test.
