Can we guess someone’s NAME just by looking at his or her FACE?
Facial appearance has influence when we judge people: it impacts how a man or a woman is observed by others, regarding critical characteristics such as attractiveness, intelligence, charisma, kindness, and authority.
Our parents usually pick our names before or right after our birth. In each case, the choice of our name has little in common with our facial appearance at birth since baby faces look much more alike when compared with grown-up faces.
Numerous studies have examined the face-name matching possibility - the capacity of a perceiver (human or AI) to guess the name of a person according to his or her facial appearance alone. For example, Psychologists Zwebner, Sellier, Rosenfeld, Goldenberg, and Mayo recently measured how well people can match the true name to a face through several studies in two different countries. In addition, they also tested if an AI algorithm can find a connection between names and faces, for which they used more than 94,000 different headshots.
They presented the perceiver (either human participants or an AI) with a series of unknown headshots. For each headshot, the perceiver was given several names to pick from, among which the depicted person’s true name was included. The tests showed that the real name can be guessed significantly above the chance level of an accidental guess.
For example, after looking at the picture above, almost 40% perceivers chose the true name “Dan”, which is notably above the 25% chance level. These findings indicate that a person’s name can be revealed by his or her facial appearance.
From a social angle, identifying a well-known face involves connecting that face to previously stored identity knowledge about the observed person, which also includes his or her name. Thus, when a human perceiver matches a name to a face, he or she uses personal, social, and historical information associated with the names he or she is given as options. This is why the human perceivers achieved much better guesses than the AI.
Therefore, these experiments suggest that facial appearance does to a certain degree depend on social expectations of how a person with a specific name should look like. The chance that our name can impact our look is intriguing and it seems that, due to the expectations imposed on us by the society, we do live up to our given names in our physical appearance. This is a prime example of how comprehensive and complex the interactions between our personality and the society we live in can be.
If you liked this post, then you would probably also like my recent article: Overcoming Loneliness.
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Very interesting in deed. There is a program on youtube called 'dating in the dark'. People literally "fall in love" before seeing what the person looks like in real life, then when they see the person, and they don't like what they look like, almost everyone dumps the person who they have "fallen in love" with. There are certain discrete features that we are attracted to, like eye spacing, cheekbone spacing. I believe that people find people attractive based on these discrete characteristics.
Thank you, @jvanman, I'm glad you found the article interesting.
Wow, I've just checked out the 'dating in the dark' - although I don't like reality shows much, the idea and psychology behind this one is really intriguing and exciting! : )
I'm a bit skeptic about this. I also picked "Dan", but could it be because the name was first in the list? Once it establishes a first association, our minds are very hard to change. I'm guessing it also has to do with how common a name is. A common name is more likely to get picked, and a person is more likely to actually have that name. It might also have to do with the synesthetic association of a persons's face shape and name sound or spelling. Just as in the "bouba / kiki" effect.
Obviously if a name suggests a location of origin or has social status history or it was trending as a baby name during a particular period it gives a lot of advantage, but I don't think its to the extend suggested.
Although I believe that the right name wasn't always the first on the list (that would be totally unprofessional), I agree with you that there are many factors affecting the reliability of such statistics.
Wow, thanks for mentioning the "bouba / kiki" effect, I haven't heard about it before and I find it really interesting! I would definitely call the sharper shape kiki and the rounder one bouba. I might even write an article about this effect. 😊
I found out about bouba and kiki when I was told (at an adult age) that I have synesthesia and that not everybody perceives letters and numbers as having specific colors or "sees" the yearly calendar revolve around their body. You know what, perhaps I should do a post about this too! :)
Well, having synesthesia, you could definitely add some personal flavor to the article! : )
What I meant was that I should write a post about synesthesia. It's not exactly the same thing because synesthetic experiences are distinct for each person, depending on what they first learned to associate, and associations can be pretty random. If you do write a post, let me know!
I've just published a post about bouba-kiki effect, feel free to check it out if it still interests you. : )
I will do, thanks! :) Sorry I only saw your comment now.
How crazy. I always wondered if there is a connection between the given name and how others treat this person. A "Hans" is different in character than a "Benjamin" and "Isolde" is different to "Hannah". That this has such an effect that you can see the results in their face is astounding.
Based on this it may even be possible to see it in the epigenetic part of their DNS. Just imagine, we could find out how ancient people were named. Or the real name of Özi, the frozen mountain mummy...
Yes, although I never thought about this before I bumped into this research, it is somewhat logical that the society will treat a bit differently someone called "Zmaj" (a Serbian name meaning "dragon") than someone called Predrag (a Serbian name meaning "very dear"). And if the society treats you a bit differently, you'll probably end up a bit different. : )
I love the way you managed to extend this matter to the potential genetics/history research, knowing these things (especially reaching the knowledge in this way) would be fascinating! 😊
Wow that's a great article. I have experienced this several times from my childhood. I have a strong belief that it is quite possible to judge someone's name with their face. In India, names are mostly attributes and thus finding the name with face works well.
I'm glad you like the article, @rainbowbala. Thanks for letting us know that names are mostly attributes in India, that's quite an interesting fact for me. : )
I tried to guess and I am within 40%. Although I think the statistics would give a different result depending on the country and if you remove the multiple options.
I agree with you, there are many factors affecting the reliability of such statistics. However, I find the idea very intriguing. : )
Yesss!!, I knew it!. I knew you could match name to face. Know I can safely boast about my prowess, as if.
Enjoy your newly obtained right to safely boast about your intuitive wisdom! 😊
Thank you soo very much.:)
ye sounds cool i like it ^^
Either Rachael or if trans (possible) Jack! :P
Interesting post.
OMG! that's give me benefit. Thank You. That great post 😊
I agree with you that the face is very influential in our life in this world, but character, the helpful, humble is everything...