Here's the apparent buried lede;
This conjecture builds on the notion that a name is a stereotype that carries social meanings and expectations (6–9), eventually enabling a shared representation regarding what the “right name” most likely is for a specific face (10). As years go by, people internalize the characteristics and expectations associated with their name and embrace them, consciously or unconsciously, in their identity and choices (2, 11, 12). Facial appearance may be affected by this process directly, as when a person chooses specific features according to these expectations [e.g., hairstyle, glasses, make-up; (13)], or indirectly, via other behaviors that affect one’s facial appearance [e.g., facial expressions; (14, 15)]. The hypothesis behind the face–name matching effect is that facial appearance may change over time to eventually represent how we “should” look.
They're talking about haircut, glasses, and makeup, not bone structure and fat distribution.
This is still, at best, sketchy.
They're talking about haircut, glasses, and makeup, not bone structure and fat distribution.
Obviously not bone structure. I don't know why that would constitute a lede to be buried.
But they're not just talking about haircut, glasses, and makeup either. They found effects even for grey-scale images with hair cropped out of the photos—see the quote below. Other studies have found that a person's personality can affect their face—probably through the facial expressions they tend to make. If your name might affect your personality, and your personality might affect your face, it seems reasonable to investigate if your name can affect your face. The researchers provide multiple lines of evidence suggesting this might be the case.
Across the machine learning studies (Studies 3 and 4B), while the facial images included facial accessories (e.g., glasses, etc.), the images were cropped around the face itself such that hardly any hair was included. Prior to feeding the images into the neural network, we preprocessed the facial images using several steps to ensure accuracy and consistency. Initially, OpenCV’s deep learning face detector, which is based on the single shot detector (SSD) framework with a ResNet base network, was employed to crop faces from the images. All cropped faces were manually verified to ensure the accuracy of the detection. Subsequently, the images were converted to grayscale, normalized to have pixel values between 0 and 1, and resized to 128128 pixels. This preprocessing approach is supported by several studies that highlight the importance of consistent face detection and preprocessing for improving neural network performance (30–32).
Calling my kid Soyjak and watching in real time him morph into
Idk, I think my appearance changing has less to do with my name and more to do with the estrogen...
Yeah they'd better have iron clad methodology and very clear correlations to get anyone to take this seriously. This is like Sapir Whorf x100
iron clad methodology and very clear correlations
Did you see the error bars figure 2?
That figure is about people guessing other people's names—they guess adults' names more often than they should, although still not that often, but they don't guess childrens' names more often than random chance
Admittedly, no. The premise seems so preposterous I didn't care that much.
Bit idea - telling everyone "hmmm you look like a Jarvis"
I once had an art teacher whose last name was Doart, pronounced "do art"
This looks like a study someone named Yonat, Moses, Noa, Jacob, and Ruth would write.
the only response is to assume the authors are jewish? i'm lost. either I am missing something or you're implying phrenology is a 'jewish science'
Ah, definitely not assuming that. It's a tongue in cheek about someones physical attributes is correlatively to a behavior. In this case they assume that their name influences their behavior to look more name-like, and i said that their name makes them write this type of study. Same fallacy. There's definitely some politics in there but that was unknown to me when i wrote the comment.
I really thought this was so obviously a phrenology study and it lacks any rigor that I didn't have to say that.
How is it a phrenology study?
The hypothesis would be that your name can affect your personality, which can then affect your habitual facial expressions, hair, and makeup.
They really busted out the AI calipers on this one. It's literally looking at skull shapes. I only read the paper and didn't watch the video, but people get the same result when figuring out if face shape is associated with criminal behavior.
people get the same result when figuring out if face shape is associated with criminal behavior.
my embarrassment grows lol
it's literally looking at skull shapes
only adults, not children, showed any face-name correlation, according to the authors. That would rule out skull shape—for whatever that's worth.
I'm not trying to double down on this goofy study I saw on youtube. I'm just feeling embarrassed and defensive that everyone is shitting on my post. I'm subscribed to a guy named Anton Petrov who summarizes new papers, and I saw this video title and thought "Wait, what?" but when I watched it it seemed to have a plausible angle.
I wonder if this is one of those studies that is actually part of a study where the researchers blast out 100 fake papers using Oxbridge and Ivy League email addresses and half of them actually get published in good journals because of academic prestige culture.
First or last? Did they test each separately?
Did they account for factors of name popularity and environmental upbringing during specific periods of time?
Ok this is actually far cooler than I thought it was, wth. I wonder if people who interpret social stimuli and such react to it differently. Did they test neurodivergent people? Sorry I am just not good at watching videos sometimes
I suggest that so-called nominative determinism is a combination of finding false patterns and genuine correlation cause by environmental factors that lead to given names
First or last? Did they test each separately?
They said "given name" which usually implies first name
Did they account for factors of name popularity and environmental upbringing during specific periods of time?
looks like it *or at least, they controlled for period of time:
Thus, we ensured that the filler names came from the same pool as the targets and belong to adults of the same age and demographic as the targets.
thats fucking weird and makes next to no sense unless it's something about psychological impacts of upbringing and the way parents assign names
psychological impacts of upbringing and the way parents assign names
and the psychological impact of whatever subconscious stereotypes people have about your name—like "chad" being a jock name, for example
I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Race science but for names. I'm so glad we use resources on this important research.
the ambiguity of "is my post reactionary, and/or just stupid, and/or no one actually read the paper," where each warrants a different response—do I self-crit? do I shrug because "everyone posts cringe sometimes"? do I defend the paper but risk doubling down on whatever might be reactionary or dumb about it?—is weirdly socially stressful even though I can handle the individual possibilities
