Your Face Actually Changes To Match Your Name As You Get Older, New Research Says
Our names are much more than labels we answer to—they are an incredibly important part of our identities. They are deeply woven into our sense of self and connect us with our families, cultures, and communities.
Names don’t just have an impact on our psychological and emotional states, though. Believe it or not, they affect our physical beings, too. That’s just how much power they truly hold.
New research has revealed that as people get older, their faces change to match the names their parents assigned them at birth.
In a study from New Reichman University, researchers sought to determine whether parents chose a baby name to suit the baby’s appearance or if the individual’s appearance evolved to match the name.
They asked adults and children between the ages of nine and 10 to match pictures of adult faces to names.
Both groups of participants were able to correctly guess the names of adult faces with a rate of success that was significantly higher than chance.
But, when it came to children’s faces and names, none of the participants could make accurate associations.
According to the authors of the study, this suggests that people begin to look more like their names as they mature.
“Children do not look like their names yet, but adults who have lived with their name longer do tend to look like their names,” wrote the researchers.
zinkevych – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
“These results suggest that people develop according to the stereotype bestowed on them at birth.”
The researchers also used a machine learning system to analyze the similarities and differences between the faces of individuals with the same name.
The computer recognized that adults with the same name looked more similar to each other than adults with different names. In contrast, children with the same name do not show such a pattern.
Finally, the research team artificially aged images of children’s faces to illustrate how they would appear as adults.
The participants were unable to accurately match the faces to their corresponding names as they did with the naturally aged adults.
The researchers concluded that people’s faces change to look like their names through a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Social expectations shape our physical and psychological development, but until now, it has been unclear just how strong the effect was.
“Social structuring is so strong that it can affect a person’s appearance. These findings may imply the extent to which other personal factors that are even more significant than names, such as gender or ethnicity, may shape who people grow up to be,” said Dr. Yonat Zwebner from the Arison School of Business at Reichman University.
The details of the study were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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