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Biased Preferences To Names, Timothy J. Panek, Megan Gibson

Undergraduate Psychology Research Methods Journal

The experimenters intended to show support that children have a bias against names that are uncommon and difficult to pronounce. Common and uncommon names were taken from the social security administration. Sixty-nine college students participated in a survey to determine what names are difficult to pronounce. Names that were common and easy to pronounce were paired with those names that were uncommon and difficult to pronounce. These pairings underwent a t-test to ensure they were significantly different from each other. Twenty-one children whose ages range from 6 to 12 took part in an interview on preferences of names. In using …