Feeling forgettable? MIT researchers have created a tool to tell you how memorable your face is
We've all had that moment: you're at a party, you go to greet someone you've met before – and they introduce themselves. Awkward…
It could just be your face, though. Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have created a tool which can tell you how memorable your face is – or whether you're just another forgettable part of the crowd…
The researchers used 60,000 images, asking people to give them scores for "memorability".
"Despite different personal experiences, people naturally encode and discard the same types of information," said the researchers.
"For example, pictures with people, salient actions and events, or central objects are more memorable to all of us than landscapes. Images that are consistently forgotten seem to lack distinctiveness and a fine-grained representation in human memory."
The results of their study show "memorable and forgettable images have different intrinsic visual features, making some information easier to remember than others," they added.
Does your face stand out from the crowd? Try out the tool here.