How Many People Can You Remember?
fivethirtyeight.com
fivethirtyeight.com
I am also a very sociable and chatty person. I can and do chat to everyone. On the tube. On a plain. Waiting in a queue (I am British after all!). You name it I will chat to you. My wife on the other hand is a person who doesn't like to chat with people she doesn't know. She gets nervous striking up a conversation whereas I just start it without giving it a second thought.
I have wondered if these are related? I am naturally very observant. I remember car reg plates, addresses and telephone numbers with ease. I can't remember if I trained myself to do this or it is just a natural ability. I suspect it is a little bit of both. Remembering IP addresses and directory structures in my early years and teens no doubt helped strengthen those skills.
A couple of months back I did this test [0] and apparently got the 'super recogniser' title with ease. If you think you are good at remember small details it is quite a fun test!
Scored 7/14. Enjoyed it a surprising amount anyway.
I got a 13/14 on the first test you posted. Then I decided to take the extended test:
- 37/40 (top 5%) upright face recognition
- 27/32 (top 5%) inverted face recognition
- 38/40 (top 25%) glasgow face matching
- 32/40 (<top 50%) chair recognition test
The results are very interesting. I don't know what to make of them. But these tests were fun nonetheless! Thanks kozukumi.
For me, if I meet someone in the corridor who I am not too familiar with, I will not greet them by their name because I have no concrete way to validate I will be accurate that quickly.
It's a valuable skill though. The more chatty and familiar you make yourself, the more people remember you.
I've always been great with faces - but I'll forget someone's name in a matter of seconds.
I'm not sociable at all and actively avoid all contact, going as far as to avoid dinner with my own mother. If that works as a data point against extrovert + facial recognition.
I'd lean more towards observant - and it's something I actively trained myself in. Always remember small details, as they can often be the most important and distinguishing ones.
Does anyone here use a personal CRM or contacts database? Would love to hear your thoughts on that type of software.
The circumstances it is really helpful with is when you get thrown into situations where you're meeting lots of people - new jobs, new school, new relationship, etc.
Ideally there'd just be a "human" API that had high-res headshots of everyone in the world, but that doesn't exist. The closest is LinkedIn but since they shut down their API's developers can't use it anymore.
"You can repeat the person’s name back to her while you’re talking to her, Harris says, “although the best strategy is simply to show more interest in the people you meet."
I've tried this with no luck, I will still forget a person's name within 60 seconds.
It almost seems like I have a portion of my brain missing, and I've always been like this for anything involving memorization. Going over a list of names on a regular basis helps, but very little. However, my spatial recall seems to be much better - if I have a seating plan for example, for some reason I can easily associate a person with where they sit, but I simply cannot remember their name even if I deal with them fairly regularly.
But I can also, without referencing maps, compass, or GPS, return to places I last visited over 20 years ago.
The spouse will frequently reel off narratives on travel itineraries, despite the number of times I have begged for a calendar or timeline instead. It just goes in one ear and out the other. Arrange it as a map, however, and I have no problem.
It would be great if I could figure out some way to map names and faces to locations, but nothing I have tried ever seems to work, beyond actual cubicle or office locations. And then, if you move to a different spot in the same office, I might forget who you are.
The best way to remember names is to actually turn that person's name into a mental image, then tie it to the location where you met them. This gives your brain a mental image of someone's name, and when you see there face again, you'll recall the component cues of their name.
For example, my name is Andy Cook, so you might imagine me standing next to a life sized Raggedy Andy doll wearing a chef's hat + apron. When you see me again, you're likely to remember the image and put the name together. The other nice thing about this technique is that it forces you to stop and commit someone's name to memory instead of letting it go in one ear and out the other.
Point is... I was super-focused on paying attention, and poof my "Hi, George. Nice to meet you. Wait, what was your name?" problem was gone... though only for that day.
My evidence is anecdotal, as I grew up in a small town, and all of us who left remember each other well, with many of us in touch with each other at least via social media. But our childhood acquaintances barely remember us. Or good friends do, but not those who were simply classmates, for example. And even those who do remember don't necessarily care.
I'd be interested in seeing any actual research performed on that aspect of remembering people.
You can also keep relations up in a time-economical way now, both two-way (chat,email) and one-way (status update).
You'd think this would make a big difference both to number and quality of connections.
It's sometimes called an exocortex and I find it to be a very useful term. It implies that your tools are a part of you :).