TY - JOUR
T1 - Face recognition's practical relevance
T2 - Social bonds, not social butterflies
AU - Engfors, Laura M.
AU - Wilmer, Jeremy
AU - Palermo, Romina
AU - Gignac, Gilles E.
AU - Germine, Laura T.
AU - Jeffery, Linda
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Authors
PY - 2024/9
Y1 - 2024/9
N2 - Research on individual differences in face recognition has provided important foundational insights: their broad range, cognitive specificity, strong heritability, and resilience to change. Elusive, however, has been the key issue of practical relevance: do these individual differences correlate with aspects of life that go beyond the recognition of faces, per se? Though often assumed, especially in social realms, such correlates remain largely theoretical, without empirical support. Here, we investigate an array of potential social correlates of face recognition. We establish social relationship quality as a reproducible correlate. This link generalises across face recognition tasks and across independent samples. In contrast, we detect no robust association with the sheer quantity of social connections, whether measured directly via number of social contacts or indirectly via extraversion-related personality indices. These findings document the existence of a key social correlate of face recognition and provide some of the first evidence to support its practical relevance. At the same time, they challenge the naive assumption that face recognition relates equally to all social outcomes. In contrast, they suggest a focused link of face recognition to the quality, not quantity, of one's social connections.
AB - Research on individual differences in face recognition has provided important foundational insights: their broad range, cognitive specificity, strong heritability, and resilience to change. Elusive, however, has been the key issue of practical relevance: do these individual differences correlate with aspects of life that go beyond the recognition of faces, per se? Though often assumed, especially in social realms, such correlates remain largely theoretical, without empirical support. Here, we investigate an array of potential social correlates of face recognition. We establish social relationship quality as a reproducible correlate. This link generalises across face recognition tasks and across independent samples. In contrast, we detect no robust association with the sheer quantity of social connections, whether measured directly via number of social contacts or indirectly via extraversion-related personality indices. These findings document the existence of a key social correlate of face recognition and provide some of the first evidence to support its practical relevance. At the same time, they challenge the naive assumption that face recognition relates equally to all social outcomes. In contrast, they suggest a focused link of face recognition to the quality, not quantity, of one's social connections.
KW - Extraversion
KW - Face identity recognition memory ability
KW - Social network quality
KW - Social network size
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85196531976&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105816
DO - 10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105816
M3 - Article
C2 - 38908305
AN - SCOPUS:85196531976
SN - 0010-0277
VL - 250
JO - Cognition
JF - Cognition
M1 - 105816
ER -