Women Better than Men in Recognizing People

Women subconsciously register more details about a person while looking at a face and so tend to be better at recognizing people when compared with men, according to a new study.

"The way we move our eyes across a new individual's face affects our ability to recognize that individual later," said Jennifer Heisz, assistant professor in the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University, and a co-author of the study.

For the study, researchers used eye-tracking technology to see which parts of a face participants were focusing at. Each of the random faces that were shown to the participants had a name along with the image.

A group of participants took the test in one day, while another group was given about 4 days to complete the test.

"We found that women fixated on the features far more than men, but this strategy operates completely outside of our awareness. Individuals don't usually notice where their eyes fixate, so it's all subconscious," Heisz said in a news release.

Researchers said that people can possibly improve their ability to remember faces by being better at scanning faces.

Previous research has shown that people who look at the whole face, as opposed to a specific feature such as nose or mouth, are better at recognizing faces.  

"The results open the possibility that changing our eye movement pattern may lead to better memory. Increased scanning may prove to be a simple strategy to improve face memory in the general population, especially for individuals with memory impairment like older adults," Heisz concluded.

The study was published in the journal Psychological Science.

Prosopagnosia or "face blindness" is a condition where the affected person can't recognize faces. The condition affects about 2 percent of the world's population.