\n
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.<\/p>\n
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.<\/p>\n
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.<\/p>\n
Your support makes all the difference.<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nRead more<\/span><\/svg><\/span><\/button><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nImagine you\u2019re hiring someone for a job that requires a very kind, agreeable and cooperative person. You have two candidates, and all you know about them are their names: Renee and Greta. Who do you think would be a better fit?<\/p>\n
If you are like the people in our recent study on hiring judgments, you probably chose Renee. We found that smoother-sounding names like Renee were preferred to harsher-sounding names like Greta for certain kinds of jobs.<\/p>\n
The idea that the sound of a word can make it a better fit for particular meanings or qualities is known as sound symbolism. And it suggests that even something as small as the phonemes in a name can carry surprising weight in how people are judged.<\/p>\n
The power of sound symbolism<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n The best-known example of sound symbolism is the bouba\/kiki effect. Across languages and cultures, people tend to match the made-up word \u201cbouba\u201d with round shapes and \u201ckiki\u201d with spiky ones.<\/p>\n
Why this happens is still debated. Various explanations exist, including the physical sensation of pronouncing the words or the way the sounds of the words imitate the features of round versus spiky objects.<\/p>\n
Several years ago, we tested whether the bouba\/kiki effect extended beyond invented words to real first names. In one part of that study, we showed participants silhouettes that were either round or spiky and asked them to match them with names.<\/p>\n
\n
\n<\/div>
In experiments, people tend to associate the word kiki with the shape on the left, and bouba with the one on the right (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nNot only do people associate names like Bob with round silhouettes and Kirk with spiky silhouettes, but people also associate these names with different personality traits.<\/p>\n
Smoother-sounding names like Liam or Noelle were judged as more agreeable and emotional, while spikier-sounding names like Tate or Krista were judged as more extroverted.<\/p>\n
Importantly, this didn\u2019t mean that Liams actually were more agreeable than Tates. In fact, when our study looked at the personalities of more than 1,000 people, we didn\u2019t find any sign these patterns existed in the real world. Nevertheless, people still make associations based on the sounds of names.<\/p>\n
Names and hiring decisions<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n In our latest study, we were curious to see how these associations might affect judgments in a real-world context: hiring. Of course, employers usually have much more to go on than a name, but there are many instances in which candidates are screened based on only limited information.<\/p>\n
There is also a great deal of evidence that socio-demographic cues in a name \u2014 such as race and age \u2014 can affect who gets a callback. The sound of a name itself could be another potential source of bias.<\/p>\n\nAbout the author<\/h2>\nDavid Sidhu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Carleton University.<\/p>\n
Penny Pexman is a Professor of Psychology at Western University.<\/p>\n
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
We designed job ads that looked for a candidate high in one of six personality factors: honesty-humility, emotionality, extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness (how organised or hard-working someone is) and openness to experience. For example, one ad looking for an agreeable candidate read:<\/p>\n
An organisation is looking to hire a new employee. The ideal applicant for this job should be:<\/em><\/p>\n\n
\nCo-operative <\/em><\/li>\nPeaceful <\/em><\/li>\nNot aggressive <\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\nA sample of adults recruited online was then given a pair of names and asked to decide who sounded like a better fit for the job. One name in the pair contained what are called \u201csonorant\u201d consonants (l, m, n) that sound especially smooth and continuous.<\/p>\n
The other contained what are called \u201cvoiceless stops\u201d (p, t, k) that sound especially abrupt. For example, they might have to choose between Liam and Tate.<\/p>\n
The people in our study made decisions for many different pairs of names, and the overall finding across three experiments was that smoother-sounding names, like Liam and Noelle, were judged as better fits for jobs looking for someone high in honesty-humility, emotionality, agreeableness and openness.<\/p>\n
When more information is available<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n We also tested what happens when additional information is introduced. For example, what if participants saw Liam in a picture or watched a video of him answering questions about himself?<\/p>\n
We found that when people saw pictures of candidates (randomly paired with names), the influence of name sound decreased. When people saw a videotaped interview of the job candidates, the sound of a name no longer had an effect on their judgments of personality.<\/p>\n
We also asked participants how well a given name fit the job candidate in the video. When people felt a name suited a candidate \u2014 regardless of sound \u2014 that candidate was judged more positively on almost every measure, including warmth and competence.<\/p>\n
In other words, there seems to be a benefit of having a name that fits, even though it\u2019s not yet known why some people\u2019s names seem to suit them better than others.<\/p>\n
Taken together, these results show the sound of a name might be one additional source of bias in hiring decisions. When people don\u2019t have a lot of details about a candidate, it seems that there is much in a name.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story. The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it. Your support makes all the difference. Read more Imagine you\u2019re hiring someone for a job that requires a very kind, agreeable and cooperative person. You have two candidates, and all you know about them are their names: Renee and Greta. Who do you think would be a better fit? If you are like the people in our recent study on hiring judgments, you probably chose Renee. We found that smoother-sounding names like Renee were preferred to harsher-sounding names like Greta for certain kinds of jobs. The idea that the sound of a word can make it a better fit for particular meanings or qualities is known as sound symbolism. And it suggests that even something as small as the phonemes in a name can carry surprising weight in how people are judged. The power of sound symbolism The best-known example of sound symbolism is the bouba\/kiki effect. Across languages and cultures, people tend to match the made-up word \u201cbouba\u201d with round shapes and \u201ckiki\u201d with spiky ones. Why this happens is still debated. Various explanations exist, including the physical sensation of pronouncing t…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5486,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5485"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5485\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.seekyourlove.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}