People have long lamented the question of “Why in comics does no one recognize Superman as Clark Kent?” since the 1930s, suggesting that with just a pair of glasses and a little curly hair, he can completely hide his identity from his closest friend, Lois Lane. This seems utterly unreasonable.
A recent study has revealed that the phenomenon is entirely normal, at least for those who are not familiar with Clark.
“I know this person, they are a reporter at the Daily Planet, who doesn’t know who Bruce Wayne is!!”
In Superman #330, DC Comics explicitly explains that he could deceive people by emitting a beam of kryptonite light through his glasses. Some skeptics (even those from DC itself) argue that the blindness induced by kryptonite is widespread in the DC universe, particularly in the city of Metropolis and the entire Earth.
However, the only explanation for this new phenomenon is that hearing it is too hard to believe. How could all the staff at the Daily Planet, where Clark Kent/Superman works, along with many other familiar faces, all fall prey to this condition? Has Superman ever undergone surgery to ensure he could maintain his identity? Surely not…
Who is this?
There are psychological studies that suggest this doesn’t have to be a mystery. According to Robim Kramer and Kay Ritchie, two psychologists from York University, a change in the external appearance of any person, even when wearing glasses or using language, can alter how others perceive them and make it difficult for others to recognize facial features. Previous research concluded that people struggle to identify someone’s face when they are only shown a distorted image of them, especially if the person in the image is behaving differently or displaying a different emotion.
In a recent study, Kramer and Ritchie used a series of commonly seen images of a person on social media, asking participants to identify if the face in the image looked the same. The images could either be shown with glasses, without glasses, or with and without a certain expression.
The results showed that when a pair of images both had glasses or both did not, 80% of participants reported the answer was correct. However, with a mixed pair of images—one with glasses and one without—the accuracy dropped to just 6%. While this may seem small, it can cause confusion for many people.
If no one recognizes that I’m wearing glasses, I could still be understood.
However, these studies rely on individuals not knowing who the person in the image is. “In reality, the idea that wearing glasses could prevent Lois from recognizing Clark as Superman is because the two individuals are too close,” says psychologist Ritchie. “For those who do not know Clark, this situation is much more challenging, as evidenced by the results we achieved through experiments.”
In the end, Lois Lane has no justification for her inability to recognize her “beloved” boyfriend; it may be that she is simply affected by the cognitive impairment of the glasses, or perhaps Lois herself is the one who needs glasses to see clearly.
