The political impact of name sounds

Abstract

Phonetic symbolism has been much debated and tested. However, few statistical measures have been made in a natural social context of the emotive values in language sounds. A clear and measurable case in which they may affect human behavior lies in political elections. Voters undoubtedly prefer to vote on the basis of issues, party loyalty, or some form of discursive meaning, but many, especially “undecided” voters, may also be influenced by the sounds of candidates’ names, especially rhythm and complementary attributes. Unlike other types of emotive associations, those linked to the phonetics of names are non‐discursive, non‐manipulable, and should be, therefore, a predictable influence on voter behavior. The results of this study confirm that reasonably accurate predictions of election results can be made on the basis of selected phonetic features in candidates’ names.

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