Masks have tested our facial recognition capabilities

The smart technology of facial recognition has been met with much ado, but less attention has been given to whether it will enhance or hamper our own innate ability to discern fellow humans.

During the drawnout two years since COVID-19 walked abruptly onto the world stage, we have learned to accept, or at least tolerate, the wearing of masks that pretty much hide two-thirds of our face.

From the beginning, I made a game of it, trying to recognize people based on two things in particular: an individual’s eyes and unique body movement, particularly their manner of walking.

Eyes, as they say, are windows to the soul, and I have always looked, in the “fairer sex”, to distinctive eyes as the primary feature of attraction.

I also consider myself among those who never forget a face, even if the passage of time can make this increasingly difficult. On the last visit to my hometown in the United States before COVID hit, I was enjoying tacos in a local Mexican restaurant when, glancing at the next table, I was sure that a woman seated there was a grade school classmate whom I had not seen for nearly five decades.

I stepped over to her table and asked, “Pardon me, but aren’t you Liz Wardian?” Indeed, she was.

In the first few weeks of COVID restrictions in Beijing in 2020, I struggled to recognize colleagues who might be passing me on the street as I strolled outside the office or apartment building. This was all the more difficult because it was February, and most people in the city were bundled up in winter coats, hats and scarves.

That is when I began to watch instead for telltale characteristics, either the type and style of clothing or the way a person walked.

I have become so good at analyzing someone’s particular gait — no two people walk exactly alike — that even on a darkened street I can usually recognize the body movement of someone I know.

But let’s get back to the eyes. The constant wearing of masks has transformed us, in most encounters, into — to borrow from the title of a famous Western horror movie — “eyes without a face”.

This has merely reinforced how we can, through our eyes only, express so much. No one can see whether, behind the mask, you are smiling or frowning, but the eyes lighting up or glaring say more than enough.

Consider the term “poker face”, which refers to someone who has become highly adept at showing no emotional reaction, a useful ability when dealt a new hand in a card game. But no matter how stoic a person might be regarding control of facial muscles, the eyes have a much harder time telling a lie.

I am reminded of the time in my college days when, heading home on foot through a dangerous neighborhood one hot summer night, I came upon two would-be robbers approaching from a darkened alley. The man in front was of slight build, but he appeared to be pointing a gun at me from underneath his T-shirt. His companion, a towering man with a lumbering gait, menacingly carried an empty glass bottle in each hand.

The situation was easy enough to size up. The smaller man in front declined to make eye contact, which told me he did not believe he was convincing enough as a “gunman”. His partner in crime, though tall and well armed, lacked any selfconfidence whatsoever, or he would have been walking in front. Instead, he hung back about 3 meters, as if hoping to hide in the shadows, and likewise looked toward the ground instead of directly at me.

The eyes said it all.

I laughed at the approaching “gunman” and said, “That’s not a gun. It’s your finger!” He pulled his obviously empty hand from beneath his T-shirt and became even more sheepish. His tall friend froze in his tracks. They went home none the richer.

Reading the eyes truly is a useful skill.

However, I still much prefer, especially in a world of literal and figurative masks, to aesthetically appreciate these “orbs” of wonder.

After all, a sparkling pair is worth a thousand smiles.