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Category: Project

Description: Research has shown that individuals can recognise personality traits from photographs of others’ faces. It is suggested that this is possible as faces contain a biometric ‘kernel of truth’ for personality traits. If biometric facial features facilitate person judgments, then those adept at face memory (super-recognisers) could show heightened ability at recognising personality traits. This study evaluates the links between face memory accuracy and trait judgment accuracy. We investigated the relationship between participants’ face memory, Big Five personality traits and their accuracy in judging the Big Five personality traits (from 50 self-selected photographs of unknown individuals) in a sample of 792 individuals. We replicated previous findings that participant extraversion relates to face memory ability. We find no relationship between other personality traits, personality judgment accuracy and face memory. Individual differences in detecting personality traits do not relate to their face memory abilities. We do replicate the relationship between extraversion and face memory ability in the largest sample to date. This suggests that super-recognising faces and traits are domain-specific abilities. If surveillance operators are expected to detect impending incidents, then our findings would suggest that this is something that super-recognisers would need training in.