What’s in a name? How the sound of names can bias hiring decisions

Imagine that you hire someone for a job that requires a very kind, pleasant and cooperative person. You have two candidates and everything you know about them are their names: Renee and Greta. Who would you be a better fit?

If you are like people in our recent study on job judgments, you have probably chosen Renee. We found that smoother names like Renee were preferred to harder names like Greta for certain types of jobs.

The idea that the sound of a word can make it a better adjustment for particular meanings or qualities is known as sound symbolism. And that suggests that even something as small as phonemes in a name can have a surprising weight in the way people are judged.

The power of sound symbolism

The best known effect of sound symbolism is the Bouba / Kiki effect. Through languages ​​and cultures, people tend to match the word invented “bouba” with round and “kiki” shapes with thorny forms.

Why does this happen is always debated. There are various explanations, including the physical feeling of pronouncing the words or the way in which the sounds of words imitate the characteristics of thorny versus round objects.

Several years ago, we tested if the Bouba / Kiki effect extended beyond the words invented with real first names. In a part of this study, we showed silhouettes from participants who were round or thorny and asked them to match them with names.

Not only do people associate names like Bob with round silhouettes and Kirk with thorny silhouettes, but people also associate these names with different personality traits.

Smooth names like Liam or Noelle have been deemed more pleasant and emotional, while more spiks like Tate or Krista have been deemed more extroverted.

Above all, this did not mean that the liams were in fact more pleasant than Tates. In fact, when our study examined personalities of more than 1,000 people, we found no sign that these models existed in the real world. Nevertheless, people still create associations based on the sounds of names.

Hiring names and decisions

In our latest study, we were curious to see how these associations could affect judgments in a real context: hiring. Of course, employers generally have much more to do than name, but there are many cases in which candidates are selected according to limited information.

There are also many evidence that socio -demographic indices in a name – such as breed and age – can affect who gets a reminder. The sound of a name itself could be another potential source of bias.

We have designed employment advertisements that have sought a high candidate in one of the six personality factors: honesty, humility, emotivity, extraversion, pleasantness, consciousness (how organized or worker) and openness to experience. For example, an announcement in search of a pleasant candidate said: “An organization seeks to hire a new employee. The ideal candidate for this work should be: cooperative, peaceful, not aggressive.”

A sample of adults recruited online then received a pair of names and asked to decide which seemed to be a better adjustment for work. A name of the pair contained what are called “sound” consonants (L, M, N) which seem particularly smooth and continuous.

The other contained what are called “speech stops” (p, t, k) which seem particularly abrupt. For example, they might have to choose between Liam and Tate.

The people of our study have made decisions for many pairs of different names, and the global conclusion through three experiences was only smoother names, such as Liam and Noelle, were considered better jobs in search of a high level person in humility, emotivity, approval and openness.

When more information is available

We also tested what is going on when additional information has been introduced. For example, what happens if the participants saw Liam in a photo or watched a video to answer him questions about himself?

We found that when people saw photos of candidates (random associated with names), the influence of sound of the name has decreased. When people have seen a video interview on job candidates, the sound of a name has had no effect on their personality judgments.

We also asked the participants how much a first name corresponded to the job candidate in the video. When people estimated that a name suited a candidate – without the sound – this candidate having been considered more positive on almost all measures, including heat and competence.

In other words, there seems to be an advantage of having a name that adapts, even if it does not yet know why the names of some people seem to suit them better than others.

Together, these results show that the sound of a name could be an additional bias in hiring decisions. When people do not have much details on a candidate, it seems that there is a lot of name.

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