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Your name has a big effect on the way you look as an adult, new study finds
Did you know that the name you are given as a baby can have a huge effect on the way you look as an adult?
A new study has found that your facial appearance changes over time to match the social stereotypes associated with your name.
Your name affects how you look
The report, conducted by researchers at Hebrew University and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences�(PNAS) journal, asked children and adults to match people’s faces to names in photos that were shown to them.
They found that both the adults and children correctly matched adult faces to their corresponding names. However, when it came to the children’s faces, both parties were unable to match the names correctly.
This shows that a name carries social meanings and expectations in adulthood and certain appearance characteristics are associated with that name. For example, hair color, eyes, mouth, face shape or wearing glasses.
As years go by, people take on these attributes which are associated with their name, and this can be done consciously or unconsciously. So, you might not even realise that you’ve changed the way you look to match your name.
People with same name look similar
In a second test, the researchers used computers to analyze images of people with the same name and determine how similar they actually look. They compared groups of three adult images, one anchor person, another with the same name and a third with a completely different name.
The study found that in 60.05% of the groups, the faces of people with the same name were more similar than those with a different name. This indicates a “meaningful association” between names and facial appearance in adults.
Researchers also did the same thing with children but found that kids with the same name don’t look as similar to each other as adults, demonstrating “no meaningful association” between facial appearance and names for children.
They concluded that adults look like their names, but children do not, further supporting the idea that people’s looks change in adulthood to suit the stereotypes of the name that was given to them by their parents.
“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,” the study said.
It’s called the Dorian Gray Effect
This concept is known as the Dorian Gray effect, which is when a person’s appearance is affected by internal factors, like their identity, emotions, behaviors or in this case, name, a paper in the American Psychological Association (APA) explains.
It’s named after Oscar Wilde’s famous novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, which revolves around a portrait of a man which changes as he sells his soul for eternal youth and carries out evil acts. A name has a similar impact on the face as Gray’s lifestyle had on his portrait.
Do you think your appearance reflects your name?
