Does Your Initial Influence Your Success

Are you smarter for having "A" and "B" initials than "C" and "D"? The "name-letter effect" on people's performances was first noticed by '80s researchers.

"Basically what [they] found was that people tend to favor the letters in their own name, and in particular, they have a fondness for their initials", said Joseph Simmons of Yale University, co-author of a new research on the issue.

"This fondness for one's initials makes sense because people tend to like themselves and that liking kind of works in the brain in an associative way, so if you like one thing, you like things that are associated with it", he added.

This seems to be more serious than believed, determining people's decisions.

"People tend to gravitate toward life outcomes that resemble their names. So for example, we know now that people named Jack are more likely to move to Jacksonville as compared to people named Phil, who are more likely to move to Philadelphia. People are also more likely to choose romantic partners with similar names (so Jack is more likely to marry Jackie) and to choose products that resemble their names", said Simmons.

"What was unclear from the earlier studies was whether this effect was conscious or not", he added.

The effect is relatively weak and not observable daily, that's why many said it must have been conscious, referring to persons loving too much their name.

Simmons and co-author Leif Nelson, also from Yale, said that if the effect were unconscious, it would make people take wrong decisions that they would normally and consciously avoid, like striking out in baseball (strikeouts are recorded with "K's") or getting "C's" in school.

The team investigated 93 years of Major League Baseball players' performances and discovered that batters having names staring with a "K" were more successful on striking out, than those with different initials.

In another approach, the team compared students' initials with their school marks, and discovered that students with "C" or "D" initials got lower marks than those with "A" or "B" initials.

"People with "C" or "D" initials don't want to do badly, but on some unconscious level doing poorly is just ever so slightly not as bad, and so they're ever so slightly less motivated to avoid it", said Simmons.

But, "A" or "B" initials do not mean that these students will be the best.

"This could be because the people who have grade-irrelevant initials, like J, are already maximally motivated to succeed on some level. They all want to get A's and B's", said Simmons.

That's why the extra motivation of the "A's" do not necessarily boost their academic skills.