What It's Like Not Being Able to Recognize Anyone

The Quarry House Tavern is a dimly lit, graffiti-covered basement dive bar in Silver Spring, Maryland, with low ceilings and great tater tots. I was recently sitting on a red vinyl banquette there, across from my husband, eating a burger and nursing a cider, when just as I took a bite, a couple walked past, stopped, and, to my horror, the woman said, “Hi, Jen!”

Who were these people who knew me? Neighbors? Hockey friends? Colleagues? I flipped through my mental catalog of white women, late 20s or early 30s with long dark hair, hoping for a spark of recognition.

“Oh, hi!” I replied, mimicking their delighted surprise at this encounter. “I can’t remember...have you met my husband, Ingo?” Ingo introduced himself, but because of the music, I couldn’t hear their response. I was lost. An hour later, on the drive home, I put it together: Joan. A longtime colleague in my department whom I saw several times a week. She had been to parties at my house. It was Joan.

I live with a moderate case of prosopagnosia, or face blindness. People like me can’t recognize faces. I can see the parts, but struggle to identify whom I’m looking at. To experience a little bit of what it’s like, try looking at upside-down photos of people you know. Your brain does not recognize those faces in the same way as those that are right-side up, so you have to work a lot harder to figure out who they are.

In the most serious cases of prosopagnosia, people can’t even recognize themselves in the mirror. I usually recognize myself, and I can even pick my husband out of a crowd—about half the time. Once he gets close, I know it’s him by his distinct gait, his square jaw, and the shape of his eyes when he smiles—which he always does when he sees me. I occasionally recognize celebrities and colleagues, but if they change their hair or dress differently, or if I see them outside the usual context (like running into a work colleague in a dive bar), I have no clue.

In 2013, in my early 30s, I was sitting on a hockey bench, shoulder pad to shoulder pad with a teammate. Between shifts, he leaned toward me and said, “You know, one of the ways I tell people apart is by looking at their teeth. Lots of things change about people, but their teeth rarely do.”

Why was he telling me this weird thing, I wondered—but also, this seemed like a good tip. He went on to tell me about prosopagnosia, which he lives with himself, and I instantly recognized my life in his stories. That’s how I learned that my relationship with faces was atypical and that knowledge has helped me become more intentional and deliberate about my interactions with others, even if I’m not always sure whom I’m talking to.

Around 2.5 percent of the population has congenital face blindness—the type, like mine, that starts from birth rather than being acquired from brain damage—and it’s common that people do not realize they have the condition until they are adults. Once I figured out that I was face blind, so many awkward moments from my past started to make sense. One of the most profound occurred when I was 3 or 4, and my mother got a perm. When she came home, I started crying because I did not know who this woman was. I was terrified that my mom was gone and had been replaced by a stranger.

I grew up in a small town, and I can now understand how my face blindness could have contributed to the isolation I felt there. I learned to recognize my friends and their moms, but most people—kids in the marching band or choir, my friends’ siblings—remained strangers to me. That was especially odd in a town where everyone seemed to know one another. Maybe the reason I felt so disconnected was because it was nearly impossible for me to know people by their faces, and I had yet to develop strategies to compensate.

A specific part of the brain known as the fusiform gyrus recognizes faces. In people with prosopagnosia, that region is impaired, so our brains rely on less precise object-recognition capabilities. Typical people can look at a face and recognize it as a whole specific thing, whereas I have to look at different parts and check if they are familiar.

Why Dogs Are Different

There is one type of face I never struggle to recognize: I remember the features and names of all the dogs I meet. They each look distinctive to me in a way people don’t—the shape of their eyes, the way they hold their mouths open, the color of their fur, the shape of their heads, the way they move. I can recognize dogs I’ve met even if years have passed since I last saw them.

This seems to be a common phenomenon; I have talked with a dozen people who are face blind but instantly recognize dogs. Research has shown that animal recognition leverages a part of the brain called the lingual gyrus, which is adjacent to the fusiform gyrus and is also active in visual recognition and visual memory. Since only the fusiform gyrus is impaired in people with prosopagnosia, we can recognize animal faces just fine. On the other hand, it is extremely rare that a person cannot recognize animals they know well, likely because the part of the brain used in this task has many other more general cognitive purposes.

Unfortunately, my skill at identifying dog faces is somewhat wasted; they never really care if I know who they are as long as I am kind to them. I’m kind to people, too, but I’ve had to develop additional behavioral strategies to get by socially. When I meet people, I never say, “Nice to meet you,” because often I have met them before. Instead, I say, “It’s so nice to see you!” which works whether we’ve met previously or not. I also rely on my husband’s help. When we run into people, he will say their name first if he recognizes them. If he doesn’t, I will ask, “Have you met my husband?” He introduces himself, they say their name, and I’m set.

That’s a lot of work just to get through social interactions that are automatic for most people. Not surprisingly, research has found that both adults and children with face blindness tend to have higher rates of social anxiety and to avoid social situations. It’s not just that we worry about how people will feel if we don’t recognize them; we also fear that they will judge us when it happens.

The most common way this pops up for me now is in class. I am a professor and, despite trying mightily, it is hard for me to recognize students’ faces, even at the end of a semester. I keep a set of notes each term (“Jessica: brown hair, wavy, shoulder-length, pink laptop case”), but I have embarrassed myself plenty of times by calling students by the wrong name in the last week of class. That kind of misidentification can ruin 15 weeks of connection, leading a student to think I haven’t paid any attention to them. It would be an understatement to say that online teaching, with names appearing by everyone’s faces on the screen, has been a relief for me.

My most mortifying experience with face blindness was not professional, though, but personal. It was at my bridal shower. On that cool Midwestern April afternoon in 2001, all of the women from my big family crowded into my mom’s living room. When my fiancé arrived at the end of the event, I was asked to introduce him to everyone. To my eyes, though, the room was a sea of pastel dresses and white faces, all sharing the same eyes and smile, and all waiting for me to name them. Just thinking about it still makes my heart race.

As I began presenting my relatives, I mixed up the names of two cousins—sisters I’ve known their whole lives, and whom I took care of as my first babysitting job. We were close, and so as soon as their mismatched names left my lips, the room gasped. I felt flush. Their mother let out a cry and corrected me.

How can a person respond after making that kind of mistake? It feels like nothing can fix it. If my face blindness had been something I had known about my whole life and had been able to share with my family, maybe they would have understood. Maybe I wouldn’t have had to do the round-the-room introductions in the first place.

The limited cultural awareness of prosopagnosia, and the incredulity others express at the very idea of it, can be isolating. I understand the desire to withdraw. I am often anxious in situations where I am supposed to recognize a lot of people. That said, once I learned that I have face blindness my ability to connect with others improved.

Since I can’t offer the first-glance recognition that makes people feel special, I focus on remembering things that are going on in their lives and make sure to follow up and ask about them. I try to listen actively and with interest, and I share more openly about myself in the hope that my vulnerability invites closeness. Even if I’m not sure right away whom I’m talking to, establishing a genuine connection makes that person feel seen.

If there is someone in your life who might walk past you in public without a glance, consider that they might need a few extra clues—a hello and some subtle reminder of who you are—and remember that good relationships transcend initial familiarity.

Jennifer Golbeck, Ph.D., is a professor in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland and author of The Purest Bond: Understanding the Human-Canine Connection.

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