To not recognise anyone outside their natural environment

[Differentstarts]

I saw my neighbour in the supermarket today they spoke to me for about 10 minutes i had no clue who they where. This is a person who i say hello to everyday. My friend i was with knew exactly who she was and she's probably only seen her a handful of times. I'm like this all the time with teachers, drs, hairdresser, postman etc unless they are where their "supposed" to be i just don't recognise them. My friend on the other hand recognises everyone after meeting them once. She thinks I'm weird I think she is. Which is normal and which are you?

I am reasonably decent but I need some cues. Bumped into someone the other day who thought I was very familiar and once I knew he knew me, I pegged him as an ex-distant-work-colleague and remembered his name.

I feel like I'm quite variable - I usually get there but it takes a little while to dig the files back out.

I met someone the other day who was insanely good at recognising people. I had been at a recruitment event in something like 2017. Spoke to him there. Bumped into him at a conference this year, me in a totally different role, and he was able to tell me where he'd previously met me!

I've really found my tribe here. Back at school, there was this girl from a different form who was only ever in 2 subject classes for GCE's, something like history and german (both small classes). Trouble is, towards the end of the 2 year course, I saw "her" both together chatting in the corridor - "they" didn't even look similar and seeing them together, no one could think they were the same person as they were different in so many ways. I never could get over it, how my brain could be so wrong!

I have this to some extent, definitely struggle to place people out of context. But I am much worse with men than women, I think possibly with women they tend to have more distinctive hairstyles. A lot of men particularly in middle age seem to look the same.
In my case I’ve always thought it was partly due to being shortsighted but not wearing glasses out and about until I was 18. I got used to using very noticeable features to recognise people e.g. hair colour and style rather than detailed ones and not always spotting people until they were next to me so I think my decoding skills are underdeveloped.

Walked past my teenage son in the street the other day.

I’m the same as you, it’s tiresome. Watching TV l always see people and say, don’t you think that looks like Joe Bloggs who l used to work with in the eighties 😂

I’m the same. Used to work somewhere we all wore high viz. could not place people out of uniform at all.

I got used to saying “I’m sorry can you remind me of your name” when someone clearly recognises me and I can’t work out who they are. I’m definitely better with voices and general movement/gait to recognize people.

Yes I'm a bit like this too. If I have meetings with someone on Teams then see them at some point afterwards in the office, I often won't recognise them. It can be embarrassing.

It's worse with (usually white) men than with women. For example, if a TV show has too many white male characters of a similar age, I won't be able to keep track of who is who or what's going on. Not sure what to make of that!

I have this up to a point, partly because I work on a till & serve a lot of customers every day. There are a few people that I always take a minute to place. I also have similar to a pp where customers don’t recognise me when I’m not at work.
DF used to be Head of the former 6th Form College locally. He was unfailingly warm & polite to everyone he spoke to, including students & parents, when he met them in the street. It was so comical that after he’d chatted away & the person had moved on, he would say “ Not a bloody clue who that was”! 🤣🤣🤣

I don’t need to have that level of conversation with them that often. That was exactly how I discovered there was two of them. Mind blown.

lol. It may be worse than I thought.

I just did the test and got a pretty high score. Am I just rude bitch then? 😳

Happens to me all the time. And the older I get the more often. Especially when people are not in the place or context.where I normally see them. I don't remember names either.

I definitely have this.

Part of my job is going to companies to deliver training. Quite often I can stand and talk to a group of people for an hour or two, who are often dressed in their company uniform.

Then we all go to the canteen for a break and the group I have been talking to mix in with a load of other people all dressed the same. I have no idea who 'my' people are so end up either ignoring a person who's spent the last hour looking at me talking, so in their mind we know and recognise each other, or I'll see someone who's never met me before and I wonder if they're part of the group I've been training, but won't actually know.

I also can't recognise people in the various hobby groups I've been in, when they're wearing normal clothes not 'kit' clothing like dry suits.

I remember my late DM years ago saying that she'd seen her dentist in the street and it took her a full minute to realise who he was. She said 'I saw Dr. Goldberg,my dentist yesterday,outside Budgens. I didn't recognise him with his clothes on'. When I fell about laughing,she said 'I mean,I didn't recognise him with his normal clothes on,I'm so used to seeing him in a white coat'.

I just took this test. I found it very confusing and uncomfortable as it didn’t recognize any of the faces and in the end was pushing any face to finish. My score although under average was high, higher than I would have thought as I don’t even my family in the street straight away and my neigbours at all.

Iv just done it to and it felt pointless as I just guessed throughout as they all look the same

I'm exactly the same. And if anybody changes their hairstyle I don't sometimes recognise them or wear glasses if they don't usually. I get folk with the similar height and colouring mixed up.

I'm so good at faces just not names, I never know where I know people from.

Interesting. I also got an above average score. However, this was nothing like recognising real people - it was more like the “spot the difference” game, which I’m very good at. Several of the faces had unique features (pout, very narrow set eyes, hollow cheeks, black eyes) so it wasn’t too difficult.

If there had been hair, hats, glasses uniforms etc. involved it would have been a completely different experience I think. Perhaps it’s that I don’t usually focus on facial features. A friend of mine knows the colour of all her acquaintances eyes. I can’t tell you with confidence whether or not they wear glasses.

I took the test and came out above average. I did take it when very tired and had left the twilight filter on my phone, so the faces were not very clear in the last part. I think I'll retake it properly again.

I thought a lot had quite distinct features too.

I used to know a GP who relied on this to have a private life outside of the NHS. In the surgery and at work generally he always wore a formal dark suit, black or dark navy, white shirt, dark tie with a small crest on the tie, and a fresh flower buttonhole, usually dark red. Outside of work, he lived in worn jeans, band t shirts and old trainers.

I have a poor visual memory (I found it difficult learning to spell as a child) and people often remember me and it's only after they explain context that I remember them. I remember watching LA Confidential and it was only after one character was killed off, I realised there were two characters I had thought were the same person. I also thought a colleague had grown a moustache in a weekend, and when I commented, what he'd done was shave off his beard.
However I did score above average in the face recognition test that's linked in a previous post above.

I just took the test.

You completed this test 03/30/2025 05:34:23 am.
This was a test of your ability to learn and recognize unfamiliar faces. Your score is the number correct out of 72.
Your score ....................... 56
Average score .................. 54.44
You scored higher than four out of every ten people who took this test

Prosopagnosia to be posh. )

As a 2nd year student radiographer I was on placement at a different hospital for 1 semester in Basingstoke.
i was walking through the foyer when a young HCA came towards me, waving, and I just couldn’t place her.
Yep, I didn’t recognise my own niece (2 years younger than me as I’m the baby of the family) who was now working there.
Sorry Tracey!!