Picture this, you’re at an old friend’s birthday party chatting to a pal, when someone comes up to you, and cheerily says your name with a smile and something along the lines of “nice to see you again!”
You have no idea what their name is. Perhaps their face is vaguely familiar, or maybe you’re completely blanking. You greet them back with matched enthusiasm after that oh-so-subtle pause as you frantically search your internal ‘name and face’ Rolodex, while your friend you were talking to waits to be introduced.
Let’s be clear, that’s something you definitely can’t do because you have no idea who the other person is and it would surely be rude to confess.
After a few minutes of slightly awkward conversation between the three of you, your friend goes “sorry, I’m Sarah…” as the stranger introduces themselves. You laugh and say, “And I’m rude, sorry, I thought you two knew each other!”
It’s a lie. But admittedly less of a faux pas than disclosing that you have no idea who the person is that you clearly once made an impression with. Or, maybe you’ve forgotten their names seconds after an introduction. It’s always an awesome feeling when you start a new job with a nameless mass of friendly co-workers who remember your name.
This happens. All the time, to pretty much everyone. Depending on who it happens to, you’ll hear myriad excuses such as “oh I’m getting older”, “I’m bad with names”, “I’m tired”, “I’m so forgetful!”, “baby brain”, “you look different”, and so forth. The common link across most of these reasons is that they’re self-directed admonishments.
Yet, realistically… how many names and faces are we supposed to remember? While this area of academic interest is relatively new, there are several interesting components to factor in. Firstly, a 2018 study by Burton and Jenkins, proposed that the human brain can store between 1,000-10,000 names and faces from their research participants’ results. That number includes public figures such as celebrities, as well as people the subjects had met or could recognise and describe. The study stated that the average person can remember 5,000 faces and names.
According to multiple pages of results from the oh-so-reliable source that is Google, we purportedly meet, or will have met, around 80,000 people by the time we’re 71 years old. Meaning, we’re taking in the names and faces of sixteen times more people than most of us can store.
The authors of the previous study kindly surmised that when we scold ourselves for not recognising someone’s face or recalling their name, we’re putting an unrealistic amount of pressure to perform on our minds, and ultimately on who we are. As we scold ourselves for this “deficit”, we’re actually thriving past capacity. Unconsciously our system prioritises who our primary remembered thousands will be.
Unconsciously our system prioritises who our primary remembered thousands will be.
Another area to think about is that our large-scale urban lifestyle is relatively new. Up until 11,000 years ago, the majority of people lived in social groups of around 100 people. Due to the smaller global population, they purportedly rarely interacted outside of these groups.
As we began to expand our social groups and develop, our ability to frequently travel long distances was, for the masses, restricted until 200 years ago. Additionally, with the introduction of various forms of digital and print media, we now recognise an exorbitant amount of people whom we may never speak to. Our relatives of the early 19th century had a global estimated population of one billion people and were likely to have met 10,000 or fewer people in their lifetimes.
Despite all of our developments, I have to agree with Burton and Jenkins. Our ‘need’ to remember so many people is something that is incredibly recent to us as a species. We have, on average, eight times more interactions with new people and a global population that is eight times the size of what our ancestors had only 200 years ago. It’s absurd to expect an evolutionary pole-vault past where we are currently in regard to recall and recognition.
Ultimately, while you may not remember that person’s name at the party, or your new co-worker after being introduced to so many people on your first day – that’s okay! It’s normal, you have a powerful internal computed that’s doing amazing work.
Whilst you can’t exactly pick and choose who you remember, a simple mnemonic can make memorisation easier. For instance, your friend’s new partner Andy loathes all seasoned food: *Bland-y (*note: if caught, say you had a mental glitch and accidentally said your name and his name together). Your lovely long-time neighbour Grace, who just is.
Or, in the case of that party, a redhead aptly named Rose. We’d met once 19 years ago in a small town I lived in for two months as a child. Ridiculous. But I did remember her once she started talking about said town.
Rose’s mnemonic wouldn’t just be the name connection. The awkward memory and location would add layers, moving her over to a more recognisable spot. As I was closing my eyes later that night, I felt my internal name-to-faces Rolodex flick over to 10,001 with the new name card addition. Okay, maybe it’s not close to that number, but I’m genuinely impressed
with the amount our brains manage to store, and I hope you are too.
