Face Recognition Disorder: Are You One of the Two in Every Hundred Affected?

Hollywood actor Brad Pitt and South Korean actors Kim Soo Mi, Oh Jung Se, and Park So Hyun have all disclosed that they face blindness. 

Prosopagnosia, or face blindness, is a relatively common condition affecting approximately 2 out of every 100 people worldwide who do not recognize people’s faces despite having no vision or visual impairment.

Face blindness can be congenital, stemming from genetic factors, or it can be caused by damage to the ventral posterior temporal lobe, the region involved in facial recognition. This damage can result from brain diseases such as stroke, brain tumors, dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease or from traumas like car accidents.

The recent viral tvN drama Queen of Tears also depicted its protagonist, Hong Hae In (played by Kim Ji Won), confusing her husband, Baek Hyun Woo (played by Kim Soo Hyun), with Yoon Eun Sung (played by Park Sung Hoon) due to face blindness caused by a brain tumor.

Symptoms include obscurity of family members, friends, or colleagues, even those known for a long time. As the symptom is confined to face identification, individuals often distinguish people by their hairstyles, gait, clothing, handbags, scarves, or other features that acquaintances used to have.

Early detection and treatment are crucial as they can severely impact social life.

Face blindness can be instantly noticed upon occurrence, and such changes indicate damage. Thus, regularly diagnosing oneself, consulting, and getting appropriate treatment from a doctor as soon as possible is essential.

The following is a Face Blindness Self-Diagnosis Test introduced by the Golden Counseling Center. If you answer yes to more than five of the seven questions, you may suspect this disorder.

1. Recognizing someone if they change their hairstyle or wear a hat is difficult.

2. You get confused when watching dramas with multiple actors.

3. You’ve been startled because your face in the mirror seemed unfamiliar.

4. You can’t recall the faces of more than five people when you close your eyes.

5. If you haven’t seen someone in over a year, you forget them easily.

6. You feel anxious when people approach you and say hello.

7. It’s hard to match voices with faces.