Still, that doesn't mean Zwebner isn't seeing a real effect, Mondloch adds. I think a big component is going to be from genetic inheritance, diet and stress." "Parents influence our face because we're genetically related, and they pick our names, too. For instance, you might quickly cross out the name Angus for an Asian guy.Īnd there are other things that change our facial appearance aside from our names and people's reactions to our names, Mondloch says. Thus it could be that we can't really pick out the right name for a face, but just that we're good at ruling out certain names. "Nobody would pick, but picked the other three names equally often, then they would still pick my name about 35 percent of the time," she says.
However, there could be other explanations reasons why Zwebner found the correlation between faces and names, Mondloch says.įor one, maybe it's that one or two of the five names the researchers chose were unpopular or a terrible match for the face that study participants saw. Don't feel like a Richard? Maybe Dick will suit you better. So I use my middle name.' That may be because they weren't matching the stereotype," she says. "I have several colleagues who say, ' didn't fit me. It may also be that people mold their names to fit them, says Melissa Lea, a psychologist and neuroscientist at Millsaps University in Mississippi. She develops a certain look maybe because she is smiling more because of all the positive feedback she gets when she smiles." The say, you really are so joyful, smiling just like your name. "The moment she's born, her parents and society treat her in a way that befits that name. Imagine someone with the name "Joy," for instance, Zwebner says. Zwebner speculates that people might be using their facial muscles to conform appearance to name. Dan is correct.Ĭourtesy of The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Researchers gave people the choice of four names for this photo: For this particular photo, participants were given the choice of 4 names. That was really surprising," says Yonat Zwebner, a social psychologist at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and lead author on the paper.
"We ran more than a dozen studies, and each time we had this feeling like, 'Oh boy, maybe this time it won't work.' And each time, it worked.
The team ran several more experiments with different conditions and continued finding that study participants – and one computer algorithm – could reliably match names to faces. I found that quite compelling." Though she says that more work needs to be done before she's convinced another reason, like that some name options are unpopular, isn't responsible for the result. That's actually pretty good, says Cathy Mondloch, a psychologist at Brock University in Canada who was not involved with the work. In one experiment, published Monday in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, scientists found that when people are shown a stranger's face and a choice of five names, they pick the right name about 35 percent of the time. There might actually be something to the idea that people who share a name also share a stereotypical "look" to them, researchers say. Zoes have wide eyes and wild hair and an air of mild bemusement. In my head, a person with the name Danny has a boyish face and a perpetual smile. A computer analysis found that people with the same name were more likely to share similar expressions around their eyes and mouths, areas of the face that are easier to adjust.Ĭourtesy of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
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