Have you ever had an experience where you meet someone new, learn their name and think to yourself, "Wow, they really look just like their name!" What does this mean, exactly? Scientists are suggesting that humans tend to associate people's names with their appearance, and can even guess someone's name based on how they look.
Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel collected thousands of photos of people faces. They labeled (贴标签)each photo with four names. Then, they asked volunteers to guess which of the four names was correct.
The volunteers were able to guess the right name 38 percent of the time. It seems that humans are able to recognize certain characteristics of faces that can give them clues (线索)about someone's name, Reader's Digest reported.
However, this only works when we're looking at names within our own culture. In addition, the volunteers were not as good at guessing the real names of people who use nicknames (昵称) more often than their real names. This shows that a person's appearance is affected by their name only if they use it often.
This kind of face一name matching happens because of a process of self-fulfilling prophecy(自我实现预言), as we become what other people expect us to become," Ruth Mayo from the university told science news website EurekAlert.
Previous studies have shown that gender and race (种族)stereotypes (刻板印象)can affect a person's appearance. The researchers believe there are also similar stereotypes about names. For example, people tend to think that men named Bob should have rounder faces because the word itself looks round, People may think that women named rose are beautiful. They expect them to be delicate and feminine, just like the flower they are named for.
