Evidence That Our Names Physically Change Our Faces Over Time

Hello and welcome! My name is Anton and in this video, we will talk about faces and names
Links:
#psychology #faces #names

0:00 Intro
1:10 Guess the names of these people
2:40 Potential explanations
3:40 Physical evidence using AI
4:50 More explanations
5:40 Additional study from 2024
7:30 Implications and what it means
8:10 Could this have other effects?
9:00 Conclusions

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[SilliS]

I think we can draw a different conclusion based on this research. I suppose it could be possible that parents that look a certain way are biased towards choosing certain names for their kids and since kids tend to look like their parents, especially after growing up, the corralation between appearance and names is already in their genes without the need for external factors.

[chris.strandburg]

There’s a lot of opportunity to help verify these findings with identical twin studies. “Which twin is named X.” Provide both actual names. If that can be guessed with significantly better than 50% accuracy, now we have something.

[oldtvnut]

Correlation is not causation. And there are so many suspicious possible influencing factors, as commenters have mentioned, which were not considered. This is like a sixth grade science project testing which fertilizer grows plants faster but ignoring that some test plants were always closer to the window.

[PrinceTerrien]

The evidence seems to suggest that no one in the comments including me got any matches right

[_Amy]

It would be interesting to see what results the study had with identical twins and how their names effected them

[alwaysbored]

I think I'm just bad at it... I got 0😅

[thehdgaming]

So for all these years, guessing people's names, and saying "you just look like a (insert name here)" to people, is actually a thing!!?!?? Damn... That's wild... 🤯

[AKABoondock]

I was SO confident in my answers and didnt get a single one right.

[hanssondaniel]

I can think of two flaws in this study off the top of my head.

If they pick the subjects randomly, they are statistically more likely to get people with common names for that specific age group/gender/ethnicity.
If they didn't account for that when choosing the other three wrong names, the correct name would likely be the more common name.
This might create a bias in the results.

The other thing is that most people got their names from their biological parents, who also gave them their genetics.
The cause of the name/face correlation could be coming from the parents.
To control for this, they would have to only include people who were not named by their biological parents.

[Deeken]

Really have to be careful with these psychology studies. Theyre rife with statistical manipulations and intentional misinterpretations so that they can present the most entertaining conclusions to the media and garner more funding and prestige. Ofcourse, all science has this problem, but particularly in psychology / sociology it is particularly easy to do this.

A big problem with this study is it just assumes that each name would be a 25% guess rate, however there are many factors that go into what names a parent picks, from religious, socio economic, ethnicity, and so on.

So if you or an AI is presented with a face and 4 names each name is not equal, because some may completely disregard the popularity of a certain name during an age range and so on.

[Saldean]

A more plausible explanation IMO:

1. names are associated with facial stereotypes
2. parents already know to which facial stereotype(s) they belong
3. they (mostly subconsciously) choose names for their children that are associated with their own facial stereotype(s)
4. facial characteristics are heritable via genes (so there is a great chance that parents and their offsprings will carry similar facial characteristics)
5. parents and their children will share more facial stereotypes than the parents and strangers
6. the names that the parents chose based on their own facial stereotypes will correlate with the facial stereotype(s) of the children, since the facial characteristics of parents and children correlate
7. the genes that determine adult facial stereotypes and not yet active in early ages (hence no correlation between names and young children)
8. later these heritable genes activate and slowly form the final adult face of the children (the facial characteristics of parents and children become similar)
9. the names of the offsprings start to correlate with the facial stereotypes

[sam]

I got zero, continued confirmation of my general antisocial nature.

[Tigermania]

Plot twist. Evidence the simulation derives all characters from a base template name.

[DwarfDragonwulf]

This is the first time I've watched an Anton video and not believed it. I named my baby 15 years before she was born. I had a name, and then I finally had a baby to give the name to. This name is a family name, it almost got lost to time.

[NathanNahrung]

The names people are given is not random though. Specificly names are chosen by parents but the possible selections are dependent on the parents culture (especially if regional) including any subcultures (like people with certain physical attributes being attracted to certain social activities). There is obviously a correlation between the culture of a person and their genetics, so parents pass on their genes (which correlate with their cultures) and choose a name for their child (which is also cultural). There might also be a bias where parents subconciously predict what their children will look like as adults based on what they themselves look like combined with what their newborns look like and then select names based on historically significant individuals that they are culturally aware of who look similar to how they think their child will one day look.

[snorni]

Some names are more popular in certain decades, so I think this guessing mostly falls into judging someone's age.

[Pyseph]

it reminds me of the kiki and bouba effect, in which people predominantly choose kiki as representing something "sharp", while bouba is something round. Sounds like its a form of psychological perception - which makes us subconcsiously dress and act differently to fit our own mental perception of our name.

[OmegaHamster]

After reading some comments regarding the name test, I think that the names we associate with faces is very dependent on where one is from.

[krns]

" intercultural " and the experiment features just basic american people with basic american names

[vanessashaver]

The researchers have left an important piece of data out, I feel... Parents give names that they feel suit the baby upon meeting them, including family names, so the initial interpretation of "which name goes with this face" is theirs, extending back a few generations into their own genetics. That meaning and those expectations, projected upon the child they have named as it grows, then show up in their face as it matures. Once they are adults, it seems that 18+ years of identity connected to their name becomes statistically visible to strangers (who have also had 18+years of identity projected upon them by their parents)... that is really interesting to me! I hope the researchers will explore this aspect as well.