Face recognition experiment

The reason for the experiment was that I have complete aphantasia (can't see images in my mind) and minor prosopagnosia (face blindness). I ran the experiment on Facebook and found that most people could recognize most of these faces. Most of the faces people had trouble with were the ones I had the most trouble with which may be the result of my inability to draw the ones that I had trouble recognizing. Mostly the women, oddly enough.

Here is the answers and information on my Facebook post experiment on face recognition.

An interesting point is that I can recognize men much better than females for some odd reason. I especially have trouble with blonde females. When there is a tv show with, say, a blonde female bad guy and a blonde female good guy, the show can be very confusing to me unless they’re in the same scene, I’m like, “is that the criminal or the detective?” So it’s interesting that with #9 no matter how many tries, I just couldn’t get her recognizable to me. And I had trouble with #4 also. It's also interesting that I seem to be able to recognize people of color easier. It's all very strange to me how these conditions affect me.

• 1. Bill Gates. – There are very few lines showing his features here but it is very recognizable from the Facebook comments. For me, I recognize him from the glasses and chin shape.
• 2. Albert Einstein – my recognition of him is definitely his mustache and hair.
• 3. John Lennon. – his glasses and pointy nose is the giveaway that allows me to easily recognize him.
• 4. Betty White – her hairdo and chin give it away for me. Her cheek bones are unique as well.
• 5. Vincent Van Gogh – his beard and the shape of his head are recognizable to me.
• 6. Johnny Depp – probably the most recognizable of all of them. His van dyke and sunglasses are iconic.
• 7. Sean Connery – his forehead, oddly enough, makes it recognizable to me.
• 8. Richard Nixon – his iconic nose and jowls do it for me. I was surprised that he was so recognizable by everyone! This one is very difficult for me.
• 9. Jennifer Aniston – I just could not make this sketch recognizable to me no matter how many attempts I made. At least one person said it was extremely obvious it was her which is fascinating to me.

Thank y’all for playing along with this experiment. It’s helping me understand other’s face recognition abilities and the differences in the way I see things!