Same face, different person

For an instant “identity crisis,” just peruse some photographs of a stranger’s face. In many instances, people view different mug shots of an unfamiliar person as entirely different individuals, say psychologist Rob Jenkins of the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and his colleagues.

Yet photos of a celebrity or other recognizable person retain a uniform identity despite changes in lighting, facial expression and other factors across images, the scientists report in a paper published online September 3 in Cognition.