Did People Used To Look Older?

hey Vsauce Michael here at the age of 18. Carl Sagan looked like a teenager but it doesn't take long in an old high school yearbook to find teenagers who look surprisingly old these people are all in their 20s but so are these people this is Elizabeth Taylor when she was just 17 and here are some high school students from the 70s did people used to look older Brandon McCarthy asked on Twitter and evidence poured in people shared photos of their parents in their early twenties their dad at 21 their mom at 18 or 19. their dad at 45.

one user shared their husband at 27 and what his father looked like at 23. and there's pretty much an entire subculture around how old footballers looked decades ago 24 31 33 29 27. it's not uncommon to think that there's something more grown up about the way people used to be to look back and think that people seemed older at a younger age than they do now let's call it retrospective aging it doesn't happen to everyone people do not and never have aged similarly and there's even the opposite observation that kids these days grow up too fast but it's a popular question and subject of numerous memes so is it real or is it an illusion fueled by cherry-picked examples that feeds Rosy Nostalgia for a time when people were tough and didn't have it as easy as you kids have it now well as it turns out both humans today really are aging more slowly than their historic counterparts changes in lifestyle nutrition smoking habits Healthcare early life conditions and Skin Care particularly the use of sunscreen are a huge part of it by comparing measures of metabolic cardiovascular inflammatory kidney liver and lung function across time researchers at Yale and USC have found that we are in fact staying younger for longer than we used to so does that mean that 60 is the new 50.

almost their results suggest that between the early 90s and the late 2000s 60 became the new 56. 40 became the new 37 and a half and 20 became the new 19. oh also during the last century dentistry and Orthodontics have played a huge cosmetic role in the kinds of faces we see in parts of the world but interestingly when faces in magazines are measured from the 1930s to today the only significant change has been that across all ethnicities the media is now exposing us to larger lips also retroactive aging can occur over short time spans when I was a freshman the seniors in my high school seemed so old to me by the time I was a senior myself I looked in the mirror and at my peers and I was like we are them now but we don't seem as old as they did what's going on isn't just about bodies first of all the seniors I looked at when I was a freshman truly were older than me at that time they graduated and went away and later when I was a senior I saw myself as I was but in my mind's eye I saw the earlier seniors as they appeared to me when I was younger retrospective aging seems to also be about perspective let's go back to this tweet this is George wimp playing Norm on the TV show Cheers now when cheers premiered went was indeed 34 but I looked it up and this image is actually from episode 24 of season 5 when Wint was 38 so we're not comparing Apples to Apples here however this is an image of George went at 34 and Ashley Fairbanks made some alterations and a good point however here's the rub these alterations don't make Wint look more like a 34 year old they make him look more like a 34 year old today similarly giving the Golden Girls modern day hairstyles and makeup drops their apparent age a lot superficial Styles and mannerisms can often make not just a big difference but all the difference which supports the hypothesis that retrospective aging is often an illusion modes of self-expression are always changing clothing hairstyles accessories makeup mannerisms language body language now modes can come back but never exactly the context is always a little bit different and from what's available or acceptable at any one time we each draw ways of appearing or being in the world and even if you don't care about how you look or think about how you act what options you even have are dictated by what's currently popular or normal or being pushed on people like you few of us stay at the stream drawing what's new all our lives for various reasons we often wander away with our catch perhaps it's because we settle into an identity we're comfortable with or fear the taboo of not dressing our age or simply run out of time to care but when we're gone the stream keeps changing and we get older and continue to use the mannerisms and styles we grabbed a while back eventually to whatever those Styles initially evoked a new connotation is added old person not because the look or behavior is intrinsically for the elderly but because those who use it us became old ourselves if you want to look older what do you do well you can dress the way older people dress and the thing is that's often how they used to dress too we think people looked older in the past because they look the way old people do today Dale Irby a gym teacher at Prestonwood Elementary School in Dallas Texas posed for his first yearbook photo in 1973.

the following year he accidentally wore the same outfit again he says he was embarrassed at first but his wife Kathy challenged him to do it again so he did and he never stopped what he gave us is a great exaggerated example of how what once connoted youth comes to be associated with old age the people we keep seeing a style on get older and older themselves until we think of the style itself as being for old people retrospective aging then is double pronged both real and illusory people in the past really did age faster than us because of differences in nutrition and lifestyle and medicine but much if not most can be chalked up to the fact that we think people like this are dressed like old people but that's an anachronism they're dressed like old people from the future the old people they would become has anyone ever dressed like a young person from the future well it happened in 1941 at the reopening of the South Fork bridge in Canada a crowd came out to celebrate and photos were taken in 2010 the photos were digitized and placed online that's when this guy was noticed a time traveling hipster why a time traveler wouldn't bother to blend in and why with all of history to visit he chose the reopening of a bridge in the 40s no one knew the photo was confirmed to be undoctored and researchers put forward the idea that this man was not in fact a time traveler that his shirt wasn't an ironic screen print but simply bore the logo of the Montreal Maroons a nearby hockey team at the time they said his sunglasses and knit sweater were not unusual for the 40s nor was his portable camera the only thing that was unusual about him was how casual his attire was and they're probably right but this all raises the exciting possibility that someone out there right now possibly even you is unknowingly dressed like people in the future will and your appearance in photos will someday freak them out you know it might be fun to start dressing even more casually or in some other odd way on the off chance that you happen to nail it and years from now you are worshiped as a time traveler oh that reminds me of today's sponsor hi I'm Michael Stevens would you like to look like you're from the future well every season those who subscribe to vsauce's curiosity box receive a box full of delicious brain food that we have made that very few people have yet this year our summer box contains our moire illusion cards a bunch of other things I won't spoil and this a Pythagorean cup supposedly invented by Pythagoras himself it is widely considered the earliest known practical joke it works just like a normal cup fill it up carry it around take a drink um refreshing but it punishes greed if you pour yourself too much the internal siphon will drain the entire contents greed is good more like greed is wet a portion of all proceeds from the Vsauce curiosity box go directly to alzheimer's research so this box isn't just good for your brain it's good for everyone's brain and we've got a special treat for you while supplies last if you subscribe to the Curiosity box you can choose a bundle of some of our favorite items from past boxes that we will throw in for free just pay shipping if you're not subscribed yet I'm ready for you with open arms and open neurons wow whoa who's that guy does he look like a bill a mark a Justin or a josh pause right now if you'd like to think about it according to research from Millsaps College in Miami University this is Mark or at least this is what we think people named Mark look like by asking people to make and rate digitally created faces researchers were able to put together prototypical faces for a number of different names this is apparently what we think a Josh looks like a bill a Justin a Dan a Brian a Tom and Andy the idea that names might conjure certain face shapes in our minds isn't that strange for example there's Wolfgang Kohler's famous finding that when asked which of these shapes is named buba and which is named Kiki people of all different ages and cultures and languages overwhelmingly assign Kiki to the spiky one and buba to the Blobby one and sure enough it certainly seems to work with names too which one of these men is Tim and which is Bob well almost unanimously people feel like this is Tim and this is Bob but are these men actually named Tim and Bob well there's the rub just because we associate certain names certain sounds with certain shapes doesn't mean we're right there's no such thing as a biological name if a person still goes by the same name they were given as a baby long before anyone knew what they would look like as an adult well surely there won't be a connection but as it turns out there is believe it or not in a multiple choice setting people can guess a stranger's name just by looking at their face more often than we would expect from luck alone it's called the face name matching effect here's a stimulus from zwebner's research this man is named Jacob Dan Joseph or Nathaniel by just randomly picking a name people should get this right 25 of the time but zwebner found that people picked the correct answer Dan nearly 40 percent of the time what's going on can names actually cause us to grow to look a certain way well apparently they can it has been called a Dorian Gray effect in Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray a portrait of the protagonist ages and grotesquely reflects his evil Deeds while he himself remains young and pure looking in a similar way it seems that in some cases our own appearance can come to reflect the name we were given but I kind of think it's really more of a reverse story and gray effect I mean in the book dorian's reality affects the appearance of his portrait but the face name matching effect goes the other way a inanimate sign a name influences our actual physical appearance well anyway it's not news that a person's name can lead others to have certain expectations of them and treat them accordingly it's been found for example that multiracial faces given European names are rated as looking more European than the same faces are when presented with non-european names the expectations a name carries with it may create a self-fulfilling prophecy whereby as a person grows up they're motivated to fulfill those expectations carry themselves in ways people think someone with their name should and even like dislike accentuate hide use and avoid different parts of their face and body depending on whether or not those parts match their name it's been found that faces and names that match are emotionally liked more than faces and names that don't analysis of voting data has shown that senatorial candidates earn 10 more votes when their names fit their faces very well then when they fit very poorly now with that in mind part of the effect could literally come from the fact that although parents don't know what their kid will look like as an adult the parents do know what they look like and without knowing it tend to prefer names that match their faces which are likely to resemble their child's face as well but not always if the dissonance is too great a person can always change their name either completely or by simply choosing a nickname if I had been just a little bit different I Michael could have always gone by Mike the fact that people can adjust their names to fit them of course merely strengthens the face name matching effect by studying whether the correct name could be guessed when different parts of a face were occluded researchers were able to develop heat maps showing which parts of the face different names are most characteristically associated with apparently looking like an an is all about the tip of the nose it's the bridge of the nose for Arthurs and the philtrum or snot trough for Benjamins aurelis are recognized by their face spiders let's go back to old people how old is an old person 73. 7 that's according to results published in the Journal of American geriatrics last year it's the average age people gave when asked when does old age begin people under 65 on average said 71 and people over 65 on average said 77. women said old age began three years later than men did white people said it began eight years later than non-whites did and people who felt healthy placed old age later in life than those who felt less healthy but how old do people want to be well that depends on how old they already are in America the only people who are the age they would like to be are 21 year olds well younger than 21 wish they were older and people older than 21 wish they were younger people who are 40 wish they were 30 people who are 60 wish they were 40 and people who are 90 wish they were 60.