Looking to land a rental property? If your name is Kevin Li, you'll have a better chance at success than if it's Mark Anderson, Luis Garcia or Tyrone Johnson.

So suggests a new Journal of Applied Social Psychology study in which males with Asian-sounding names saw more positive online responses from landlords than males with white, Hispanic or African-American-sounding names. Among women, white and Asian-sounding names opened the most doors, followed by Hispanic and African-American ones.

And across all four ethnicities, women fared better than men when electronically inquiring about a rental apartment.

"A combination of ethnic and gender stereotypes appears to lead landlords to prefer certain kinds of people to others as renters," said Allyson J. Weseley, co-author of the study. "White women and Asian women appear to have the best chance, followed by Asian men."

Online inquiries were sent to nearly 1,600 landlords advertising rental properties in a variety of neighbourhoods.

The messages were uniform, save for the name of the sender, which was manipulated to imply a particular ethnicity (names were based on the U.S. Census record of the most common names by race).

Among males, prospective tenants with Asian-looking names received the highest proportion of positive responses, at 45.2 per cent.

Hispanic and white-sounding names followed at 34.7 and 34.0 per cent, respectively, while the African-American name saw the least success, at 16 per cent.

This builds on a 2006 Journal of Applied Social Psychology study in which white renters received preferential treatment over black renters.

"Our findings suggest that once you throw an Asian-American and a Latino into the mix, the preference is for Asians, with whites and Latinos falling somewhere in the middle," said Weseley, a behavioural science teacher with degrees from Princeton, Harvard and Columbia University.

"The kinds of stereotypes people have about white men are that they're loud and boisterous and aggressive compared to, say, Asian men, who are stereotyped to be more well-mannered and timid," Weseley added Female names' positive responses were higher than those of males (40.8 per cent versus 27.1 per cent),

with white and Asian women's names seeing the most success (67.3 and 60.8 per cent, respectively), and Hispanic and African-American

names seeing the least (43.1 and 41.2 per cent).

The researchers also uncovered evidence that tenants are likelier to win over landlords when their race matches that of the neighbourhood's profile (such as a black tenant in a predominantly black suburb), but Weseley said a larger sample would be needed to tease that out.

Taken together, study co-author Michelle Feldman said the findings demonstrate that modern society is far from post-racial.

"Discrimination is still there - even if it's subconscious, even if it's just stereotypes associated with someone's name - and it does affect people's opportunities and what they have access to," said Feldman, who's currently studying at Cornell University.

In fact, the name effect appears to be so powerful that Weseley said it makes compelling case for using a generic email address and sign-off in online introductions.

"It's sad, but you may need to make first contact without giving away your ethnicity, or even gender," said Weseley.

"I may really want to be the most even-handed, open-minded landlord, but unconsciously, as I scroll through (potential renters), I might stereotype."