Abstract:

The egocentric bias in face recognition is the tendency to infer the performance of others on face recognition based on their own performance. Previous studies on egocentric bias in face recognition only focused on the estimation of other people's ability to distinguish between different faces.  This study further focused on other people's experience of faces, that is, the estimation of the familiarity of other people's faces (whether they know them or not). Participants were shown 200 face images (two different images for each celebrity). For each image, participants answered whether they recognized the face or not, and what proportion of participants they think would recognize the face. The results revealed an egocentric bias in the estimation of face recognition rate: participants’ estimates of other people’s recognition rates were higher for celebrities that they themselves recognized, compared with those they did not recognize. The conclusion of this study can provide scientific basis for better understanding and modeling of human face cognition.

Key words: face recognition, egocentric bias, metacognition