Overview of conditions.

Investors perceive stocks of companies with fluent names as more profitable. This perception may result from two different channels: a direct, non-deliberate affect toward fluent names or a deliberate interpretation of fluent names as a signal for company quality. We use preregistered experiments to disentangle these channels and test their limitations. Our results indicate the existence of a significant non-deliberate fluency effect, while the deliberate fluency effect can be activated and deactivated in boundary cases. Both effects are consistent across different groups of participants. However, whereas the fluency effect is strong in isolation, it has limitations when investors are confronted with additional information about the stock.

投资者会将名称流畅易读的公司股票感知为更具盈利能力的标的。这类认知可能源于两种不同路径：一是对顺口名称产生直接且无意识的情感倾向，二是将顺口名称有意识地解读为公司质量的信号。我们借助预注册实验拆解这两种路径，并检验其适用边界。研究结果表明，存在显著的无意识流畅性效应；而有意识流畅性效应仅在特定边界情境中可被激活或抑制。两种效应在不同参与者群体中均表现一致。不过，尽管流畅性效应在单独呈现时效果显著，但当投资者接触到股票的额外相关信息时，该效应会受到限制。