It turns out there’s a good reason for not noticing: men experience “hair blindness.” It’s like fridge blindness, cupboard blindness, and underwear on the floor blindness.
University College London neuroscientist Brad Duchaine has learned that when we see someone, our brain focuses on the face for recognition. Once it recognizes the person, it stops “looking” — and we don’t process the hair.
Duchaine works with people who suffer from prosopagnosia — face blindness. They recognize their friends and family through their coif. So he’s turned his research upside down, and discovered that we process faces differently than other objects like cars and fast-moving frying pans from frustrated wives.
Source: ‘Hair blindness’ likely to exist in humans, New Scientist
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Why You Didn’t Notice Your Wife’s New Hairdoo
It turns out there’s a good reason for not noticing: men experience “hair blindness.” It’s like fridge blindness, cupboard blindness, and underwear on the floor blindness.
University College London neuroscientist Brad Duchaine has learned that when we see someone, our brain focuses on the face for recognition. Once it recognizes the person, it stops “looking” — and we don’t process the hair.
Duchaine works with people who suffer from prosopagnosia — face blindness. They recognize their friends and family through their coif. So he’s turned his research upside down, and discovered that we process faces differently than other objects like cars and fast-moving frying pans from frustrated wives.
Source: ‘Hair blindness’ likely to exist in humans, New Scientist
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See what else Michael has written about on the topics of blindness, Brad Duchaine, face blindness, hair, neuroscientist, New Scientist, University College London.
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