Investigating predictors of superior face recognition ability in police super-recognisers

There are large individual differences in the ability to recognise faces. Super-recognisers are exceptionally good at face memory tasks. In London, a small specialist pool of police officers (also labelled ‘super-recognisers’ by the Metropolitan Police Service) annually makes 1,000’s of suspect identifications from CCTV footage. Some suspects are disguised, have not been encountered recently, or are depicted in poor quality images. Across tests measuring familiar face recognition, unfamiliar face memory and unfamiliar face matching, the accuracy of members of this specialist police pool was approximately equal to a group of non-police super-recognisers. Both groups were more accurate than matched control members of the public. No reliable relationships were found between the face processing tests and object recognition. Within each group however, there were large performance variations across tests, and this research has implications for the deployment of police worldwide in operations requiring officers with superior face processing ability.