STUDY: YOU LOOK LIKE YOUR NAME

(March, 2017) A new study suggests that each person’s face could actually be shaped by his or her name. In other words, Sarah really does look like a Sarah, and Fred really does look like a Fred. Researchers at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem found that when a person was shown a stranger’s face, they picked the right name out of five choices about 35 percent of the time. Plus, the participants continued to keep matching up faces with the right names through a series of other experiments with varying conditions. Lead author Yonat Zwebner says, “We ran more than a dozen studies, and each time we had this feeling like, ‘Oh boy, maybe this time it won’t work.’ And each time, it worked. That was really surprising.”
(“We Look Like Our Names” is published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.)
* Oh, all those poor guys named Dick!
* I’ll bet you dollars to donuts lead author Yonat Zwebner does not look like a Yonat Zwebner.
* And what about celebrity kids with crazy names? “You look like a Golden / Ode Mountain / Chosen / Apple / Spurgeon.”
* And then there’s these (warning: tasteless):
– What do you call a guy who looks like he’s been attacked by a lion? Claude.
– What do you call a woman with one foot? Eileen.
– What do you call a guy who looks like a cattle thief? Russell.
– What do you call two men with no arms and no legs coming through the window? Curt ‘n Rod.
– What do you call 5 men with no arms and no legs in the ocean and a woman named Ann? Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob ‘n Ann.
– What do you call a man with no shins? Toe-knee.
– What do you call a guy that comes in a box with his arms and legs? Kit.
– What do you call a dog with no legs? Doesn’t matter, it won’t come when you call him anyway.