Quote:
Originally Posted by DrPhil
AGDee and Alumiyum, are these nonwhites who were confusing you with another white person?
I notice differences between the stories the white GCers have shared as compared to the nonwhite GCers.
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Both whites and nonwhites. My theory is this: Everybody seems to use 2-3 characteristics to initially identify people. Hair color definitely seems to be the standout in all of these stories. I know for me, eye color probably comes next and then body type. Not necessarily height because the vast majority of people are "taller than me".. so it wouldn't matter whether someone is 4 inches taller or 8 inches taller, they are "tall" to me. I'm thinking that the two to three characteristics that I use developed because those are the things that were most quickly identifiable, even from a distance, when I was a child and pretty much only had exposure to Caucasians and some Filipinos. So, very early in life, I could distinguish between most people by hair color, eye color and body type. Since two of the three tend to be much more similar in other races, it requires more detailed observation to distinguish among people. If someone grew up in a more homogeneous environment, where more people had the same hair and eye color, they would not learn to use those characteristics. They would learn, from a young age, to use different types of characteristics.
Conversely, the characteristics that non-whites would use to distinguish between people are characteristics that are more similar among whites than different.
I do find that I have a harder time distinguishing between, say, the white dads of marching band students. Why? They now are all gray and balding and wear glasses so I have to find other characteristics to go by. Until I have some real interaction with each of them, I have a hard time figuring out who is who. Once I actually interact with them (anybody, really), I then use deeper characteristics to distinguish them.
When I look at police artist renderings of people they are looking for after a crime, I'm always kind of shocked that a witness could give them enough information to get a realistic looking picture. I don't think I have a good enough memory for facial characteristics to do that. Unless there is an extremely unusual characteristic, I'm not sure I notice things like shape/size of nose, face shape, eye shape, etc. of someone I don't know.