So you’re at a party, and you see a new face in the room, someone you haven’t met yet. You introduce yourself, and it turns out — you totally have met this person before. (Maybe even a couple times before.)
You are probably feeling very awkward. And you’re also probably a guy.
A new study shows that women are better than men at remembering new names and faces, something past research has also shown. But this new paper, just published in the journal Psychological Science, also suggests the reason why women are so good at it: In the first few moments that we meet someone, we tend to take in more details about the new face in front of us. We study the eyes, the nose, the cheekbones, the mouth — without even knowing we’re doing it — and then neatly file that information away for our brains to retrieve next time we come across the new person.
Finish reading this article at NBC.com