1 . Most parents can remember the artful mix of excitement and anxiety accompanying the choice of their baby’s name—it will follow the child his or her entire life. But the effect could be even more significant. In research recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, our research team shows that the stereotype (模式思维) that a given society has of a first name can influence the way people look.
In eight studies, we found that participants shown ID-style photos of people they’d never met were able to recognize the first name of the described person well above the chance level. In other words, there is something about an Emily that…just looks like an Emily.
If an Emily really does look like an Emily, even a computer should be able to guess her true name. The computer was even able to produce a “heat map” for each name, a face with the features that “betray” a person carrying that name shown in red or orange colors. How should we understand this effect? Until now, social psychologists knew that our facial appearance influences the extent to which others perceive us as attractive, intelligent, trustworthy or warm. These studies show that others’ perceptions of our first name are reflected in our faces.
Interestingly, the face -name effect occurs even if we can only see the hair of a person. Our hair is possibly the part of our face that we control with the most ease. The fact that this alone can produce the face name effect further illustrates the suspected self-fulfilling mechanism behind it.
Together, the eight studies suggest that we wear our social belonging on our face, and that we actively shape our features to be recognized by our reference group. Choosing baby names remains exciting. Whatever the first name you give to your child, he or she will end up wearing it.
1. What was the participants’ assignment?| A．To pick out ID-style photos they’d never met. |
| B．To match strangers’ photos with their names. |
| C．To find out Emily from various ID photos. |
| D．To perceive Emily’s character. |
| A．By drawing a map for each name. |
| B．By sorting out different faces in a map. |
| C．By showing a person’s face in different colors. |
| D．By highlighting certain features in warm colors. |
| A．People wear their character on their faces. |
| B．Hairstyle accounts for a large part in appearance. |
| C．A fixed idea of first names determines one’s look. |
| D．Social belonging is irrelevant to our facial features. |
P=Paragraph
A． | B． |
C． | D． |
