Name Styles in Relation to Personality

What’s in a Name? Coverage of Senator Hillary Clinton during the 2008 Democratic Primary

“…Brown 1965). The meanings attached to names indicate the way in which social relations operate (McDowell and Pringle 1992;Wood 1992) and elucidate underlying psychological processes and core elements of social psychology (Freud 1938;Murphy 1957;Hartman 1958). Naming is subject to a series of social rules that depend on the status of the speaker, subject, observers, and the situation; these rules comprise standard naming etiquette (e.g., R. Brown 1965).…”

Managerial conservatism and corporate policies

“…A more narrow strand studies the link between signature style and personality. For instance, Boshier (1973a), Hartman (1958), Strunk (1958), and Zweigenhaft (1975) argue that conservative individuals sign their names in a particular way. For instance, Hartman (1958) finds that the individuals who habitually fail to disclose their first names appear more conservative.…”

“…For instance, Boshier (1973a), Hartman (1958), Strunk (1958), and Zweigenhaft (1975) argue that conservative individuals sign their names in a particular way. For instance, Hartman (1958) finds that the individuals who habitually fail to disclose their first names appear more conservative. Boshier (1973a) supports this finding and finds that the experiment participants who most frequently sign both first and last names are more likely to be liberal.…”

“…To the best of our knowledge, no finance study explores the effects of managerial conservatism measured by a signature style proxy (i.e., avoiding disclosing first name). Motivated by the above psychology research (i.e., Boshier, 1973aBoshier, , 1973bBoshier, , 1968Hartman, 1958), we use the signature styles of S&P500 CEOs as a proxy for conservatism. We handcollect the handwritten signatures on firms' financial statements (e.g., 10-K, proxy filings, scanned documents) from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)'s and firms' websites from 2002 to 2017.…”

“…This paper adds to the recent economic literature using handwritten signatures to measure managerial traits such as Ham et al (2018Ham et al ( , 2017, Kettle andHäubl (2011), andShu et al (2012). 10 Individuals' handwritten signatures are a "powerful symbolic representation of the self" (Hartman, 1958;Jorgenson, 1977;Zweigenhaft, 1975Zweigenhaft, , 1977, so using CEO handwritten signatures derived from the firms' domains can bypass the bias from survey data. Psychology research provides a more distinct definition of conservatism than finance studies, which often use the terms "conservative" and "risk-averse" interchangeably.…”