What's in a Face?

FoxInATreehouse

I thought this article was interesting because it explains how we recognize and perceive other people, and why we think we see faces or people when they do not even exist, like a face in the shadows or a pumpkin with a personality. The main quotation below is from the print version and the link shows some of the illusions and photos.

Martinez-Conde, Susana and Stephen L. Macknik. "What's in a Face?" Scientific American. 20:1. Special Issue 169. Summer 2010. pp. 26-35.

"Our brains are exquisitely tuned to perceive, recognize and remember faces. We can easily find a friend's face among dozens or hundreds of unfamiliar faces in a busy street. We look at each other's facial expressions for signs of appreciation and disapproval, love and contempt. And even after we have corresponded or spoken on the phone with somebody for a long time, we are often relieved when we meet him or her in person and are able to put 'a face to the name.'

The neurons responsible for our refined 'face sense' lie in a brain region called the fusiform gyrus. Trauma or lesions to this brain area result in a rare neurological condition called prosopagnosia, or face blindness. Prosopagnostics fail to identify celebrities, close relatives and even themselves in the mirror. But even those of us with normal face-recognition skills are subject to many illusions and biases in face perception."

Some of the interesting points are:
- We can perceive someone as masculine or feminine based on how much contrast there is in the amount of light.

- "...the brain doesn’t simply process and store representations of whole faces per sé, but rather individual face-features (mouth, eyes, etc) in isolation of each other." Our brains also prefer to recognize faces right side-up. So, a face may look odd if upside-down, but not as odd if the individual features (eyes, mouth, nose) are right side-up. (see the Margaret Thatcher illusion)

- Our brains are wired to recognize faces quickly based on a very small amount of information. Since we only need an impression of the human face, that is why we often misinterpret other objects or light patterns to be human-like.

lil_lisa

Wow, that's really interesting. How do you get into the area of work of researching faces? I'm assuming some sort of psychology.

FoxInATreehouse

lil_lisa wrote: »

Wow, that's really interesting. How do you get into the area of work of researching faces? I'm assuming some sort of psychology.

If I understood you correctly, you think I work in this field? I wish! Sadly, I do not. I just found the article because I'm interested in it. I actually studied business admin in college, so it has nothing to do with it at all. I just think it's fun.

And if I was completely off the mark, then I'd say a combo of neuroscience and psychology or art.

lil_lisa

Oh no, I was just asking in general, how does one get into a job like that. Have you ever put a mirror along the middle of your face to make another face out of just one half? They create two completely different faces!

looksee

I think the whole area is very interesting. There have been studies done on how people react to symmetrical faces, attractive faces, etc. People can unconsciously react negatively to a face they do not consider attractive.

I know of one person, unfortunately someone in authority, who has no idea that he reacts differently to what he considers good looking and plain faces.

In fact you only have to read Boards to see how people can react to what they consider good looking females. And how they react to less 'attractive' faces. Considering what some of these people look like themselves, they really should be able to get past superficial appearance