New York: Do you like your name and initials? Well, most people do, and sometimes we like them enough to influence key human traits. International researchers, who call this phenomenon the "name-letter effect", carried out a study and found it is influential enough to encourage the pursuit of name-resembling life outcomes and partners, the Science Daily reported on Friday.
However, if you like your name and initials too much, you might be in trouble, according to the researchers.
"We found that liking your own name sabotages success for people whose initials match negative performance labels," lead researcher Leif Nelson of the University of California said.
The researchers came to the conclusion after examining the phenomenon in academia. Letter grades are commonly used to measure students' performance, with the letters 'A', 'B', 'C' and 'D' denoting different levels of performance.
Nelson and his fellow researchers reviewed 15 years of grade-point averages for MBA students graduating from a large private American university. They found that the students whose names began with 'C' or 'D' earned lower grade-point averages than students whose names began with 'A' or 'B'.
Students with the initial 'C' or 'D', presumably because of an unconscious fondness for these letters, were slightly less successful at achieving their conscious academic goals.
Interestingly, students with the initial 'A' or 'B' did not perform better than students whose initials were grade irrelevant.
"So, having initials that match hard-to-achieve positive outcomes, like acing a test, may not necessarily cause an increase in performance," according to the team. The researchers have also confirmed their findings in the laboratory with an anagram test.
Comments
0 comment