Face Recognition Test

A neighbour waves from across the street and you smile back without a clue who it is. For some people this happens once a year, for others every week. This face recognition test measures how often faces let you down and in which situations. Researchers call the strongest form face blindness, and many people live with a milder version without ever putting a name to it.

What the questionnaire measures

Your result opens with one overall score from 0 to 100 for face recognition difficulty, where a higher number means faces do less of the work of telling people apart. The score is built from three areas. Familiar faces covers people you already know: walking past a friend, failing to place a colleague outside work, losing someone after a new haircut. New faces covers how quickly you learn people you have just met, whether you keep film characters apart and whether you can match a photo to someone from a party. Workarounds and worry covers what happens when faces fail, from leaning on voice, walk and clothes to avoiding names and waiting for others to say hello first. Remembering faces and remembering names are separate skills, which is why someone can be great at one and poor at the other.

How it works and how to read your result

You rate 25 short statements from Strongly disagree to Strongly agree. Statements from the three areas are mixed, and seven of them describe being good with faces, so they count in reverse. Each answer adds up to four points to one area and to the overall score. Your result shows:

• your overall face recognition difficulty from 0 to 100 with a low, moderate or high label;
• separate scores for familiar faces, new faces and workarounds;
• the area that pushes your score up most and the one that holds up best;
• how your answers compare with other people who rated the same statements.

Many people look for a prosopagnosia test after an awkward moment, such as greeting a stranger or missing a friend in a café. Psychologists Punit Shah, Richard Cook and colleagues found that everyday experiences like these say a lot about how well a person recognises faces. Read your result as a map: a high workarounds score next to a low familiar faces score means your clues are doing quiet but serious work.