What's Distinctive about a Distinctive Face?

Abstract

In this study we examine the relationship between objective aspects of facial appearance and facial “distinctiveness”. Specifically, we examine whether the extent to which a face deviates from “average” correlates with rated distinctiveness and measures of memorability. We find that, provided the faces are rated with hair concealed, reasonable correlations can be achieved between their physical deviation and their rated distinctiveness. More modest correlations are obtained between physical deviation and the extent to which faces are remembered, either correctly or falsely, after previous study. Furthermore, memory ratings obtained to “target” faces when they have been previously seen (i.e. “hits”) do not show the expected negative correlation with the scores obtained to the same faces when acting as distractors (i.e. “false positives”), though each correlates with rated distinctiveness. This confirms the theory of Vokey and Read (1992) that the typicality/distinctiveness dimension can be broken down into two orthogonal components: “memorability” and “context-free familiarity”.