Has anyone ever told you this? Have you ever said these words to someone else? Well if you have and if you were being honest, then you may be what’s known as a “super-recognizer.” Apparently, just as there are people who suffer from face blindness, the opposite can take place.

Researchers from Harvard Vision Science Laboratories have established for the first time that some people are more skilled than others at remembering faces. Researcher Dr. Richard Russell posits that super-recognizers actually see faces differently than your average unobservant schlub. They can recognize the face of someone they met only in passing years after the encounter, completely out of context.

The Harvard team was researching prosopagnosia, or face blindness — a condition in which people fail to recognize even close friends and family. An estimated two percent of the population suffers from very poor recognition abilities. Right now, they haven’t pinpointed exactly what it is in the brain that allows someone to function as a super-recognizer, but they’re hoping to learn more about this new finding.

I fall much closer to the super-recognizer category, despite my lousy memory. I’ve recognized faces many years later of people I met in passing or didn’t even meet at all. I’m lousy with remembering names, but that’s a different story.

What about you folks?

Read more if you dare:
Can face blindness explain why that person at work never says hi to me?
How Human Memory Works
How Facial Recognition Systems Work