First Impressions from Given Names
We form a first impression as soon as we meet someone unfamiliar to us – they could be trustworthy, smart, confident or a bit annoying. These impressions can be formed based on the way they look or the way that they sound. What is more, often the first piece of information we learn about someone is their first name and this could also provide helpful information when forming a first impression. In my recent paper, I talk about how we integrate information from someone’s face, voice as well as their name when evaluating what they might be like as a person.
For this project, I collected data on people’s spontaneous first impressions of some of the most common British names between 1904-2020. You can find word clouds showing these impressions for all the names included in the dataset below. In these word clouds, more commonly mentioned words and phrases are shown in a larger font.
Read the full paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology here.
This research was supported by a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship awarded to Mila Mileva.
