What’s in the name? How the Sound of Names Can Addicted Hiring Solutions

Imagine hiring someone for a job that requires a very kind, enjoyable and cooperative person. You have two candidates and everything you know about them are their names: Renee and Greta. Who do you think would be more appropriate?

If you are like the people in Our recent study You may have chosen Renee when hiring solutions. We have found that smaller sound names such as Renee are preferred to rude names such as Greta for certain types of jobs.

The idea that the sound of a word can make it more suitable for specific meanings or qualities is known as sound symbolism. And this suggests that even as little as phonemes in the name can bring surprising weight in the way people are judged.

The power of sound symbolism

The most famous example of sound symbolism is the Bouba/Kiki effect. Inward languages ​​and culturesPeople tend to coincide with the word “bouba” with round shapes and “kiki” with spikes.

Why this is still being discussed. Different explanations exist including physical of pronouncement of words or the way in which the sounds of words Imitate the characteristics of Round according to spiked objects.

A few years ago we tested whether the Bouba/Kiki effect expanded beyond fictional words to real namesS In one part of this study, we showed silhouettes of participants who are either round or spiked, and we asked them to combine them with names.

Not only people associate names like Bob with round silhouettes and Kirk with Spiky Silhouettes, But people associate and these names with different traits of personalityS

Small-sounding names like Liam or Noel were considered more enjoyable and emotional, while Spikier-Sounding Names such as Tate or Krista were considered more extroverted.

The important thing is that this did not mean that Liams were actually more pleasant than Tates. In fact, when our study examined the personalities of more than 1000 people, we did not find any signatures that these models exist in the real world. Nevertheless, people still make associations based on the sounds of names.

Names and solutions to hire

In our Last studyWe were curious to see how these associations could influence the judgment in the real world context: hiring. Of course, employers usually have a lot more to go on by name, but there are many cases where candidates are checked on the basis of limited information only.

There is also a lot of evidence that socio-demographic signals in the name-as race and age– It can be reflected who gets back call. The very sound of one name may be another potential source of bias.

We designed job ads that were looking for a candidate high in one of Six personal factors: Honesty, emotionality, extroversion, pleasure, conscience (how organized or hardworking it is) and openness to survive. For example, an ad looking for a nice candidate states: “An organization is looking to hire a new employee. The ideal candidate for this job should be: cooperative, peaceful, not aggressive.”

Then an example sample of adults hired online received a pair of names and asked to decide who sounds more suitable for the work. One name in the couple contained what was called “sonorant” consonants (L, M, N), which sound especially smooth and continuous.

The other contained what was called “voiceless stops” (P, T, K), which sound particularly sharp. For example, they may need to choose between Liam and Tate.

The people in our study made decisions about many different pairs of names, and the overall finding in three experiments was that the smoother sound names, such as Liam and Noel, were rated as better work gadgets, looking for someone with honesty, emotionality, friendliness and openness.

When more information is available

We also tested what happened when additional information was entered. For example, what if the participants saw Liam in a photo or watched a video of him answering questions about himself?

We found that when people saw candidates photos (randomly paired with names), the impact of the name of the name decreases. When people saw a video interview with job applicants, the sound of the name no longer influenced their personality judgments.

We also asked the participants how well a name answered the candidate for the video. When people felt a name suitable for a candidate – no matter the sound – that the candidate was more judged by almost any measure, including heat and competence.

In other words, it seems that there is a benefit from having a name that fits, although it is not yet known why the names of some people seem to fit them better than others.

Taken together, these results show sound It may be an additional source of bias in hiring solutions. When people do not have many details about a candidate, there seems to be a lot of name.

This article has been reissued by Conversation Under Creative Commons license. Read Original articleS