Names with /i/ Suit Positive Faces: The Naming Paradig

Features of word form (e.g., phonemes) are sound symbolically associated with word meaning. In valence sound symbolism, specifically, i-phonemes are associated with positive valence, whereas o-phonemes and other rounded vowels are associated with negative valence. Experimentally, sound symbolism is predominantly examined using pseudo-words. The present research employs a new experimental paradigm where participants are shown faces and are asked to choose a suitable name from memory for each face. In two experiments (total N = 399) and a corpus analysis, we tested whether valence (manipulated via facial expressions, Experiment 1a, or likability, Experiment 1b) is associated with the occurrence of i-phonemes and o-phonemes in first names. Consistent with previous findings, names given to positively (vs. negatively) valenced faces more frequently contained i-phonemes, whereas, unexpectedly, valence did not influence o-phoneme occurrence. Among consonants, exploratory analyses indicate that nasals were associated with positive valence (only in the Experiments), while back consonants, and plosives were associated with negative valence. Thus, the naming paradigm bridges the gap between controlled pseudo-word experiments and the natural use of real names and can be employed to examine whether sound symbolic associations are stable enough to generalize to meaningful words, thereby tapping into the development of language.