Editorial: Individual Differences in Face Identification: A Causal Relationship with Anxiety?

Abstract

Face identification has become one of the most popular topics in psychology, encompassing the cognitive, forensic, neuroscience, developmental, and social divisions. Most of this research, however, treats face identification as though all observers are equivalent, by studying the “average” human observer [1], ignoring the substantial individual differences that exist in the ability to process faces [2,3]. For example, using a simple face-matching task, in which observers have to decide if pairs of unknown faces depict the same person or two different people, individual performance ranges along a broad continuum from close-to-chance to perfect [4-8]. In addition, studies of recognition memory for unfamiliar faces reveal a similar distribution of ability, with individual d’ scores ranging from 0.5 to 6.8 for old/new decisions to previously seen faces [9]. Understanding these individual differences is crucial for improving face identification and for enhancing security. Importantly, however, rather little is still known about their underlying causes

Face identification has become one of the most popular topics in psychology, encompassing the cognitive, forensic, neuroscience, developmental, and social divisions. Most of this research, however, treats face identification as though all observers are equivalent, by studying the “average” human observer [1], ignoring the substantial individual differences that exist in the ability to process faces [2]. Understanding these individual differences is crucial for improving face identification and for enhancing security. Some of these differences relate to the individuals’ race [3], gender [4] and age [5]. However, there are wide variations among the individuals with the same race, sex and age. Unfortunately, examining the predictors of these variations has received little attention by face recognition researchers. For example, a proficiency in face identification was found to reflect a general advantage in visual processing [2]. Intriguingly, face identification is also influenced by factors that appear “non-visual” in nature. Specifically, research showed that observers who exhibit high levels of neuroticism are less accurate at face processing than individuals with emotional stability [6,7]. Among the facets of neuroticism, anxiety revealed the strongest negative correlations with face identification [6]. Indeed, anxiety was found to degrade face memory [8] and face perception [9]. In addition, using eyewitness identification paradigm [10], anxiety was found to impair eyewitness performances [11]. However [12], found that poorer face memory was correlated with an increase in social anxiety but not general anxiety. Therefore, there might be a strong link between face processing and the dynamics of social communications. Specifically, individuals with high social anxiety might not have good eye contact skills, although the eyes were found to provide the most important information for face individuation [13,14]. However, the causal relationship between anxiety and face identification remains unclear and needs more attention by future studies.