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Morendil comments on How is your mind different from everyone else's? - Less Wrong
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One of my hunches is that people differ much more than commonly thought on the accuracy and strength of face recognition, even outside of clinical prosopagnosia.
I'm very poor at this, tending both to not recognize people, but also to over-recognize; some days every stranger I cross makes me think of someone I know strongly enough that I almost break into a smile and start greeting them, and because of past embarrassing occasions I've developed compensations which now manifest as shyness.
I'm very bad at recognizing celebrities; I've often been out walking with my wife or with friends, and hear "Oh look, here goes X" where X is someone I saw too much of on TV. And I've totally missed them going by, and a second glance leaves me unconvinced it's actually X.
I do this so frequently that I have come to call it "rounding to the nearest cached person." Based on conversations with people I know (warning: anecdotal evidence), it seems to be a relatively common phenomenon. I agree with Nancy's prognosis that people vary a lot more than is commonly thought, which seems to explain this.
The kicker though, for me at least, is this: how many social conventions are built around an idea of how people commonly think - which in many cases is largely wrong?
For instance, using name tags at a social gathering will earn you my everlasting gratitude, especially if they would not normally be expected. So will encouraging people to look at them, and designing so that they remain visible at all times (large type helps).
There is a special spot reserved midway between Heaven and Hell (actually not, but you get the idea) for people who have the bright idea of providing name tags, then screw it up by printing them only on one side and putting them on lanyards where (in accordance with Murphy's Law) they systematically end up chestwards.
Our badges at work are like this[1], and unfortunately, it has implications beyond not remembering names -- that makes it easy for an unauthorized person to go through the facility unchallenged by having the (uninformative, easily-faked) back side of the badge showing.
[1] Well, in that most people use them or something else that allows the badge to dangle and have the same problem.
This is what I was going to post about. I am terrible at recognising faces. People I know well are fine, but even a quite good acquaintance in the wrong context can easily throw me completely. There are a very small handful of celebrities I can recognise by their faces. I recognise most people below the level of fairly-good-acquaintance by their voice, not their face. There have been many occasions on which I haven't realised I know someone, or have seen an actor in something else, till they speak.
It's also not quite that I remember the features but can't synthesise them into a face, which I think some people with this difficulty find -- I have real trouble remembering features, too. Half the time, if you ask me whether friend-so-and-so has dark or light hair, or is tall or short, I'll struggle to say for sure.
I think I'm relatively bad at reading facial expressions, too.
I have the same thing, with the added complication that I can't recognize voices either. I can remember people's hair color and approximate height, though.
I usually (fail to) recognize people as appropriate, but one time I failed to recognize my own sister, and another time I kissed a total stranger on the cheek, thinking he was a friend.
I believe that people vary much more than is commonly thought in just about every mental respect. Language is a way of conveying a sketch of shared experience.