Why we forget names and remember faces.

Most of us will be familiar with this: We never forget faces but the name that goes with the face is a whole different story. The reason for that is quite simple, we can easily recognize a face but it’s much harder to remember a name. When we meet someone for the first time, certain brain cells react to specific distinctive points on a face. When we meet this person again our brain cells will react quicker and easier then when we met this person for the first time. In fact our brain is thinking: ‘Hey, I’ve done this before!’ Or in other words: I know that face! So there will be no need to dig into your memory.

Remembering someone’s name is another process altogether. When you have recognized someone, you will have to kick your memory banks into gear. We need to connect with our nervous system/brain and find all the gathered information (like their name) we collected during a previous meeting. Is the information not accessed for a while (was the meeting a long time ago) our brain gets sluggish. It takes longer to gather the necessary information and this can lead to awkward situations, which we are probably all familiar with.