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Never forget a face? Research suggests people know an average of 5,000 faces

For the first time scientists have been able to put a figure on how many faces people actually know- a staggering 5,000 on average.

The research team, from the University of York, tested study participants on how many faces they could recall from their personal lives and the media, as well as the number of famous faces they recognised.

[...] Dr Rob Jenkins, from the Department of Psychology at the University of York, said: "Our study focused on the number of faces people actually know- we haven't yet found a limit on how many faces the brain can handle.

[...] For the study, participants spent an hour writing down as many faces from their personal lives as possible -- including people they went to school with, colleagues and family. They then did the same for famous faces, such as actors, politicians, and other public figures.

The participants found it easy to come up with lots of faces at first, but harder to think of new ones by the end of the hour. That change of pace allowed the researchers to estimate when they would run out of faces completely.

The participants were also shown thousands of photographs of famous people and asked which ones they recognised. The researchers required participants to recognise two different photos of each person to ensure consistency.

The results showed that the participants knew between 1,000 and 10,000 faces.

R. Jenkins, A. J. Dowsett, A. M. Burton. How many faces do people know? Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2018; 285 (1888): 20181319 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2018.1319

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