Carl Engelking on D-brief discusses the latest odd finding – matching names to faces:
A name might also affect the face we see in the mirror.
In a battery of studies involving hundreds of participants, researchers at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem showed that people can correctly match a name to a face better than random chance. That’s because over time, according to researchers, we develop a look that reflects the associations people commonly have with our given name. …
[Yonat] Zwebner designed 8 different experiments; six that measured how well hundreds of individuals from France and Israel could match a name to a face, and two that tested a computer’s ability to do the same thing. Participants saw a headshot, and were required to choose the correct name from a list of four. In every experiment, participants’ accuracy exceeded random chance, or 25 percent. Their computer learning algorithm, trained on 94,000 faces, correctly matched names to faces with 54 to 64 percent accuracy.
But here’s where it gets interesting: In one experiment, French participants correctly matched French names and faces 40 percent of the time, but when French participants were asked to match Israeli names and faces, their accuracy dropped to 26 percent—just about chance. Similarly, Israeli participants were better at matching Hebrew names and Israeli faces than French names to French faces. This disparity, researchers say, is evidence that culture-specific stereotypes influence the characteristics we associate with a name.
Going further, researchers say these stereotypes ultimately affect a person’s facial appearance. But how?
And … no real answer. The presented one – that we internalize expectations and “… cultivate a look that reaffirms those expectations.” Rather chicken and egg, if you ask me.
Of course, I wonder what happens to folks who change their names. Do their faces follow suit? Or are we merely talking about facial hair and eyebrow shaping?
And what about those of us with rare names? Neither Hue nor my given name of Hewitt are burdened with the barnacles of expectations – does this mean I’m freer than most?
