Unique-Named People Are Perceived More Suitable for Unique Jobs: A Social Perception and Its Real-Life Impact on Name Change

The latest research has revealed that unique-name holders pursue unique jobs in social reality. However, it remains unclear if such an association exists in social perception. We addressed this question with five studies. Through surveys, we showed that people associated “having a unique name” with “choosing a unique job” in general views (Study 1) and in specific cases (Study 2), which were both partly explained by creativity-relevant stereotypes. Then, through experimental manipulations, we examined the causality and extended the investigation to ecologically valid contexts. In personnel selection (Study 3), people would assign unique jobs to applicants with unique (vs. common) names. For a name change (Study 4), people would recommend unique names to workers in unique (vs. common) jobs. Moreover, these behavioral tendencies were subject to people’s general views about the name-job uniqueness association. In Study 5, we collected real-world name-change data from China, U.S., and U.K. and found that, when there was a name change, artists’ (a typically unique job) given names were actually changed to more unique ones. These findings demonstrate a perceived name-job association and enrich our understanding of the name-job relationship in real life.