Blame Crime on Name? People With Bad Names Are More Likely to Commit Crime

Past evidence has revealed the interpersonal and intrapersonal costs of bearing bad names. The current research examined whether bad names predicted a more serious social outcome: criminal behavior. We found name-crime links based on a large dataset of 981,289 Chinese criminals (as compared to the whole Chinese population and a national representative sample of 1,000,000 non-criminal controls). People whose names were unpopular, negative, or implied lower warmth/morality were more likely to commit property and violent crime, whereas people whose names implied higher competence/assertiveness were more likely to commit violent and economic crime. Critically, lower warmth/morality of name still robustly predicted crime when controlling for demographic confounds and addressing alternative explanations. Furthermore, possessing a less warm/moral name predicted the motive for intentionally committing crime. These findings demonstrate the ethical costs of bearing bad/immoral names and enrich the understanding of how social-cognitive dimensions (warmth–competence) are associated with human behavior.