Would you hire Liam over Kirk? Name sound symbolism and hiring

Sound symbolism is the phenomenon by which certain language sounds evoke particular associations. Previous work has demonstrated that names evoke personality associations based on the sounds they contain, with names containing sonorant consonants evoking different associations than those containing voiceless stops. Here we examined whether these associations would impact a mock hiring task. We created job ads that described an ideal candidate as being high in one of the six factors of the HEXACO framework of personality. Participants were given a pair of candidates, one whose name contained sonorants (e.g., "Molly") and one whose name contained voiceless stops (e.g., "Katie"). Whether job ads contained three personality adjectives (Experiment 1), a single adjective (Experiment 2), or a single adjective and a picture (Experiment 3) participants were more likely to choose the candidate with the sonorant name for certain personality factors. In Experiment 4 participants saw videotaped mock interviews of candidates presented with a sonorant or voiceless stop name. Names were less influential in the presence of audiovisual information than perceived name fit. These results demonstrate the impact of name sound symbolism in a more material scenario. They also help establish boundary conditions and moderators for name sound symbolism.