When you hear the name Tate or Krista, what comes to mind? What about Liam or Noelle?
A new study published in the journal Acta Psychologica suggests that all else being equal, if you have a soft, smooth sounding name, you may have an advantage in the workplace or the job market.
(Fittingly, the Newsweek summary of this research is written by Melissa Fleur Afshar, whose name sounds like a soft wave gently splashing onto the sand.)
The authors asked study participants to “hire” people for specific jobs based mostly or solely on their names. Each of the jobs was supposed to require particular strength on one of six personality factors: honesty/humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience.
People with soft-sounding names like Bob, Molly, and Renee were judged better fits for jobs requiring especially high levels of honesty, emotionality, agreeableness, and openness to experience.
Those with “spiky” names like Katie, Kirk, and Greta were better matches for jobs requiring extraversion.
The replication crisis in social science tends to make us reflexively skeptical of research like this, but it lines up with other research about how we unconsciously interpret different vowel sounds. Recall the “bouba/kiki effect,” which has been replicated across multiple languages and cultures.
We know hiring can be unconsciously influenced by race and socioeconomic background. Here is one more bias that hiring managers need to consciously check at the door. And it also holds implications for marketers, who must think carefully about the images and emotions that brand names subtly evoke in consumers.