Familiarity, memorability, and the effect of typicality on the recognition of faces

Abstract

Typical faces are more poorly discriminated on tests of recognition than are atypical faces, an effect suggested to mediate similar findings for attractive or likable faces. We tested the hypothesis that the effect of typicality on recognition is a function of context-free familiarity and memorability, which function in opposition. Two orthogonal principal components were extracted from subjects’ ratings of faces for typicality, familiarity, attractiveness, likability, and memorability—one consisting of the ratings of familiarity, attractiveness, and likability, and reflecting context-free familiarity, and the other consisting of the memorability rating. As expected, typicality loaded equally (r ≈ .66), but with opposite sign, on both components. In subsequent experiments, both components were found to be significant and additive, predictors of face recognition with no residual effect of typicality. General familiarity decreased discrimination, and the memorability component enhanced it, supporting the hypothesis. The results are discussed in terms of the mirror effect.