Dana L. Walker¹, William G. Hayward¹; ¹Lingnan University, Hong Kong SAR

Face recognition is presumed to be an important skill for everyday social interaction. Theoretically, it has been assumed that accurate and efficient recognition of the face may be a social asset for building and maintaining social relationships. However, there is minimal empirical support for the social correlates of individual differences in face recognition. Recent research has found a focused link between face recognition ability and the quality of social connections, rather than the sheer quantity (Engfors et al., 2024). However, this conclusion was based on a Caucasian sample from a highly individualistic country. An interesting question remains whether these findings generalise to other ethnicities, and especially a primarily collectivist culture. Social connections are central in collectivist societies with more rigid social hierarchies when compared to more individualistic societies. Therefore, we aimed to replicate and extend the research of Engfors and colleagues by investigating multiple social correlates of both unfamiliar and familiar face recognition in an East Asian sample. A newly developed naturalistic face familiarity task and the Chinese version of the Cambridge Face Memory Test were administered alongside measures of social network size, social bonds, personality traits, social interaction indices, and social anxiety traits. Consistent with previous findings, quality of social connections was a correlate of familiar face recognition, but not sheer quantity nor extraversion-related personality traits. Interestingly, and in contrast to Engfors and colleagues’ findings, familiar face recognition was associated with autistic-like personality traits (social and non-verbal communication dimensions) as well as social anxiety traits. Furthermore, there was minimal evidence for the social correlates of unfamiliar face recognition. Therefore, the key link between the ability to recognise familiar faces and social bonds, rather than may be particularly important to more collectivist cultures.

Acknowledgements: This work was supported by a grant from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (LU13605523) to William G. Hayward.