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A new study has found that a person’s face tends to evolve to match their name. The researchers sought to determine whether parents choose a baby name based on what seems appropriate for the baby’s appearance, or whether the process is reversed—that over the years, an individual’s facial appearance changes to match the name given to them. from their parents.

The study was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research team was led by Dr. Yonat Zwebner, Dr. Moses Miller, and Prof. Jacob Goldenberg of the Arison School of Business at Reichmann University, along with Noah Grobgeld and Prof. Ruth Mayo of the Hebrew University.

In the study, 9- to 10-year-old children and adults were asked to match faces with names. The findings revealed that both children and adults correctly matched adults’ faces with their corresponding names significantly above chance. When it came to children’s faces and names, however, participants failed to make accurate associations.

In another part of the study, a machine learning system was fed a large database of images of human faces. The computer recognized that images of faces of adults with the same name were significantly more similar to each other than images of faces of adults with different names. In contrast, no significant similarity was found between children with the same name compared to children with different names.

Researchers conclude that the similarity between a person’s face and their name is the result of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The appearance of the face changes over a long period of time to conform to the social stereotypes associated with the name. Such stereotypes can be formed in many ways, for example, because the name is associated with a famous figure or because of the connotations of a biblical name.

Dr. Yonat Zwebner, Arison School of Business, Reichman University says: “Our research highlights the broader significance of this surprise effect – the profound impact of social expectations. We have shown that social constructions or structuring do exist—something that has so far been almost impossible to test empirically.

“Social structuring is so powerful that it can influence a person’s appearance. These findings may suggest the extent to which other personal factors that are even more significant than names, such as gender or ethnicity, can shape people to grow up .”