The visual perks of (not) being a wallflower: how individual differences in social intelligence predict face recognition performance

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Face recognition is a critical skill for social interactions that also varies considerably across individuals. We asked whether face recognition ability may correspond to individual differences in basic social skills and strategies. In the present study, we examined whether measures of social cognition and intelligence would be able to predict face recognition performance. Three experiments were carried out online using a common standard of face recognition ability, the Cambridge Face Memory Task (CFMT) and two variants, the female (F-CFMT) and CFMT-Chinese (CFMT: N = 1124; F-CFMT: N = 920; CFMT-Chinese: N = 953). For each participant, we also collected self-report judgments for the Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI), the Tromsø Social Intelligence Scale (TSIS), and the Revised Cheek & Buss Shyness Scale. We found several significant correlations between CFMT score and the collected social measures. Overall, conventionally prosocial traits/skills corresponded to more accurate face recognition, such that openness, agreeableness, social awareness, and other similar items, yielded a significant positive correlation with CFMT score. However, extraversion notably presented a significant negative correlation with CFMT score and social awareness was an especially strong predictor of face recognition performance. These results suggest that face recognition and social cognition abilities indeed covary and may reflect a feedback process between perceptual and cognitive function resulting from socializing experiences.

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