As one gets to know us, though, the stereotypes fall by the wayside in favor of a real file, with real data about us. And that file will probably be anchored by the face. Thus, many close people get processed in the way strangers are by the majority. So we need to consider how strangers are processed, and that is with stereotypes. In fairness to face blind people, it should be said now that the face blind are far too busy juggling categories of people just to tell them apart.
Most people use faces to identify all the people they know.
The capacity of their face system is adequate to the task for this group. Facial processing is non-verbal and occurs in the subconscious. Stereotypes constitute a very memory-efficient way to deal with the millions of people that they do not know. This document is copyrighted. For information, or to contact the author, go to Appendix D, the Author's Information Page .