Study Finds Names May Shape Facial Appearance Through a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Humans are remarkably adept at guessing someone’s name from their face alone.

A new study suggests this ability may arise from a self-fulfilling prophecy.

When participants were shown an adult’s photograph alongside four possible names, they selected the right one at a rate far higher than chance would predict. Their performance was much poorer, however, when they were asked to pair children’s faces with names.

How names may shape facial appearance

The results indicate that, as people grow up, they may adjust their appearance to fit their own names more closely. This could happen through hairstyles, make-up, glasses, piercings or even facial expressions.

"We have demonstrated that social constructs, or structuring, do exist – something that until now has been almost impossible to test empirically," explains Yonat Zwebner, a marketing expert from Reichman University in Israel.

"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."

Previous research has identified evidence that a person’s facial appearance can hint at their given name. What remained uncertain was whether babies were named to suit their naturally occurring facial features, or whether their looks gradually changed to align more closely with their birth name.

Testing the nature versus nurture question

The latest research examined this nature-versus-nurture question with both human volunteers and machine-learning algorithms. It was carried out by researchers from Reichman University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel.

In one experiment, children aged between 8 and 12, as well as adults aged over 18, completed a multiple-choice task matching the faces and names of both children and adults.

Younger and older participants were equally successful at linking adult faces to their correct names. Yet neither group could do the same with photographs of children aged 9 or 10.

Even after the children’s faces were digitally aged to resemble adults, participants could not identify their names at better-than-chance levels. This implies that facial appearance may change after childhood, increasingly fitting a person’s name over time.

Machine learning finds the same pattern

In a follow-up experiment, machine-learning algorithms were trained using a larger set of facial-image data. Like the human participants pairing faces and names, the algorithm found that adults sharing a name generally resembled one another more closely than adults with different names.

The same pattern did not apply to children who shared a name.

"Together, these findings suggest that even our facial appearance can be influenced by a social factor such as our name, confirming the potent impact of social expectations," write Zwebner and colleagues.

In essence, the team argues that names assigned at birth act as ‘social tags’ that can influence a person’s appearance through a self-fulfilling prophecy.

As time passes, the researchers explain, people may absorb the traits and expectations linked to their name, adopting them "consciously or unconsciously, in their identity and choices."

Put another way, society’s ideas about how we ‘should’ look appear to influence how adults do look.

When George Orwell famously wrote, "At 50, everyone has the face he deserves", he may have been on to something.

The people guessing names, along with the faces and names they were asked to identify, were Hebrew-speaking Israelis. Meanwhile, the machine-learning research relied on US databases of white Caucasians. It is therefore unclear whether the results extend beyond these cultural and ethnic groups.

Researchers now hope to establish the age at which people begin to display stereotypes associated with their names.

"These results suggest that people develop according to the stereotype bestowed on them at birth," the researchers conclude.

"We are social creatures who are affected by nurture: One of our most unique and individual physical components, our facial appearance, can be shaped by a social factor, our name."

The study was published in PNAS.