The paper experimentally investigate questions of psychology of human face recognition. The investigative and operational and investigative practice, there are difficulties in assessing the reliability of the identification of a witness or victim of a criminal offense. The method used to identify the presentation does not correspond to the psychological laws of human perception. The experiment proved that the verbal portrait of the system as part of the identification procedure does not improve, but on the contrary, worsens the accuracy of recognition. It was found that the recommendation not to carry out an identification, if recognized by the man known personally identified, and psychologically not always justified in the case of similar faces.