Remember Faces by Focusing on a Feature

Quick Win

Linking a person’s name with a striking facial feature — like a piercing eye color or sharp jawline — will help to aid your memory.

Try This Today

1. When you meet someone new, ask yourself: What’s the first thing you notice about the person’s face? Is it a prominent chin? Freckles? Scan the person’s face and pick a feature that stands out to you.
2. In your mind, link that facial feature to the person’s name: Sue has sharp cheekbones, while Doug has a crooked nose. Connecting the facial feature to the name can help strengthen both aspects in your memory, making you more likely to remember the face and the name the next time you see the person.
3. For bonus points, create an association between the facial feature and an existing memory, object, event or other person. For example, you might notice that Deb has green eyes like your sister’s. Meanwhile, Adam’s wide jaw reminds you of the actor John Travolta.

Why

Think you’re bad at remembering names? You might be worse at remembering faces. When 24 young adults were asked if they recognized images of faces or written names that they had seen before — but in different photos and fonts — the participants correctly identified 83 percent of the names but only 64 percent of the faces, according to a study published in 2018 in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. Faces look slightly different every time you see them, whether due to a different hairstyle or a change in lighting, while names generally remain the same. Fixating on a facial feature that stands out to you, like a large nose, thick eyebrows or pale blue eyes, may help you recall your new acquaintance’s face (and name) next time you see them.