Facial appearance

Research demonstrates that facial appearance affects social perceptions. The current research investigates the reverse 1: Can social perceptions influence facial appearance? We examine a social tag that is associated with us early in life — our given name. The hypothesis is that name stereotypes can be manifested in facial appearance, producing a face-name matching effect, 2 both a social perceiver and a computer are able to accurately match a person’s name to his or her face. In 8 studies we demonstrate the 3 of this effect, as participants examining an unfamiliar face accurately select the person’s true name from a list of several names, significantly above chance level. We replicate the effect in 2 countries and find that it extends 4 the limits of socioeconomic cues. We also find the effect using a computer-based paradigm and 94,000 faces. In our exploration of the underlying mechanism, we show that existing name stereotypes produce the effect, as its occurrence is culture-dependent. A self-fulfilling prophecy seems to be at work, as initial evidence shows that facial appearance regions that are controlled by the individual (e.g., hairstyle) are 5 to produce the effect, and socially using one’s given name is necessary to generate the effect. Together, these studies suggest that facial appearance represents social expectations of how a person with a specific name should look. In this way a social tag may influence one’s facial appearance.