Did People Used To Look Older?

Summary by Krater

This video explores retrospective aging, examining why people in past decades often appear older in photographs, and discusses the psychology behind face-name matching and how names influence our perceptions of appearance.

From the video

Answers: Why did people in the past look older when they were younger?

• Retrospective aging
• Face-name matching effect
• Biological aging over time
• Perception of age
• Psychology of appearance
• Cultural changes in aging and style
• Historical photo analysis

What it concludes

• Humans today are aging more slowly than their historic counterparts due to changes in lifestyle, nutrition, smoking habits, healthcare, and sunscreen use.
• Between the early 90s and late 2000s, perceived age shifts mean 60 became the new 56, 40 became 37.5, and 20 became 19.
• When faces in magazines are measured from the 1930s to today, the only significant change across all ethnicities is exposure to larger lips.
• People in the past aged faster than us due to differences in nutrition, lifestyle, and medicine, but much of retrospective aging is anachronism caused by dressing like older people from the future.
• People can guess a stranger's name from their face at rates significantly better than chance, a phenomenon known as the face-name matching effect.
• Senator/senatorial candidates earn 10% more votes when their names fit their faces well compared to poorly fitting names.