Washington: Your name can influence your personality, especially its letters. Psychologists have postulated that the letters -- particularly the first letter of our names -- can influence decisions, including whom we marry and where we move.
The effect is called "implicit egotism".
In 2008, two Belgian researchers found that workers in their country were more likely to choose a workplace if the first letter of its name matched their own, the journal Psychological Science reports.
A review study found the Belgians got the cause and effect exactly backwards. And that might make us more skeptical about the effects of implicit egotism.
"Walt Disney worked for a company starting with D not because of an unconscious attraction to that letter," writes University of Pennsylvania associate professor Uri Simonsohn, "but because he so christened it".
Simonsohn analyzed records of political donations made during the 2004 campaigns, which include donors' names and employers, according to a Pennsylvania statement.
Like the Belgians, he found that the first initials matched. But then he compared those first-letter matches with matches of the first three letters, which more accurately reflect the actual names of both the people and the firms.
Analyzing the two side by side, he found the effect of the one-letter match dropped away, while the three-letter sharing increased the match of person to company a striking 64-fold.
It was because many people work at firms they named or at those founded by their grandfathers or brothers.
Simonsohn doesn't discount implicit egotism altogether. "I can't imagine people don't like their own letter more than other letters," he says.
Comments
0 comment