The name-letter effect is the tendency of people to prefer the letters in their name over other letters in the alphabet. Whether subjects are asked to rank all letters of the alphabet, rate each of the letters, choose the letter they prefer out of a set of two, or pick a small set of letters they most prefer, on average people consistently like the letters in their own name the most. Crucially, subjects are not aware that they are choosing letters from their name. Discovered in 1985 by the Belgian psychologist Jozef Nuttin, the name-letter effect has been replicated in dozens of studies, involving subjects from over 15 countries, using four different alphabets. It holds across age and gender. People who changed their names many years ago tend to prefer the letters of both their current and original names over non-name letters. The effect is most prominent for initials, but even when initials are excluded, the remaining letters of both given and family names still tend to be preferred over non-name letters. Most people like themselves; the name is associated with the self, and hence the letters of the name are preferred, despite the fact that they appear in many other words. People who do not like themselves tend not to exhibit the name-letter effect. A similar effect has been found for numbers related to birthdays: people tend to prefer the number signifying the day of the month on which they were born. Alternative explanations for the name-letter effect, such as frequent exposure and early mastery, have been ruled out. In psychological assessments, the Name Letter Preference Task is widely used to estimate implicit self-esteem. There is some evidence that the effect has implications for real-life decisions. In the lab, people disproportionately favor brands matching their initials. An analysis of a large database of charity donations revealed that a disproportionately large number of people donate to disaster relief following hurricanes with names sharing their initial letter (e.g. Kate and Kevin following Hurricane Katrina). Studies that investigate the impact of name-letter matching on bigger life decisions (where to live, whom to marry, which occupation to take on) are controversial.
Background Systematic interest in the letter preference began in 1959 with brand-preference studies by researchers Mecherikoff and Horton. These tried to find the relative appeal of letters for use in package labels. In an extension of the studies, subjects were asked to rank the English alphabet by the pleasantness of the appearance of capital letters. While there was not a great deal of agreement amongst the subjects (the coefficients of concordance were low), a strong positive correlation was found between a letter's average rank and how frequently it occurred as an initial letter of family names. Robert Zajonc, a social psychologist, published research in 1968 into preferences between pairs of words (e.g. "on" or "off"): in the overwhelming majority of trials the preferred word was also the most common. Zajonc also tested preferences for nonsense words and found that people liked them the more they heard them. He interpreted these results as evidence that mere repeated exposure to a stimulus is sufficient to enhance its attractiveness. Around 1977, Belgian experimental psychologist Jozef Nuttin was driving on a highway looking at license plates when he noticed that he preferred plates containing letters from his own name. He wondered if people in general would prefer stimuli that are somehow connected to them; a "mere belongingness" as opposed to Zajonc's mere exposure.
First study In his lab at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Nuttin designed experiments to test the hypothesis that people place a higher value on letters that feature in their name. It was crucial to the experimental design to rule out other factors, particularly mere exposure. If letters in a name are also letters that occur with higher frequency, then a preference for one's own letters might arise from the mere-exposure effect.
Method
To find an effect which ruled out mere exposure, Nuttin created a yoked control design in which two subjects evaluated the same letters separately. Some of the letters belonged to one subject's name, and some of the letters belonged to the other subject's name, while some were random. In this design, any difference in preference between subjects would have to be based on whether the letter occurred in their name. For example, take the fictitious pair Irma Maes and Jef Jacobs as shown in the table. The first stimulus is A and U: the last letter of Irma's first name and a letter not in her name. The next stimulus is M and D: the penultimate letter from Irma's first name and a letter not part of her name. As can be seen in the table this is repeated for the remaining letters of Irma's first name. The letters of her last name then also appear in reverse order, and finally the letters of both of Jef's names. The shading in the table reveals the pattern hidden to subjects, who would have been told to circle their preferred letter of each pair as fast as possible without thinking. In the first trial, 38 Dutch-speaking local elementary school girls circled the letters they preferred in two yoked lists of letter pairs. A significant preference for the letters of one's own name over those of the other person was found. The second experiment used 98 Dutch-speaking local university students, to see if more years of reading made a difference. Four other factors were varied: either pairs or triads of letters; encircling the preferred letter or crossing out the less preferred ones; the letters QXYZ, infrequent in Dutch, included or excluded; own-name letters presented first or last. All conditions gave a name-letter effect, with a stronger effect when QXYZ were included and the less preferred letter was crossed out. No significant difference was found using family name rather than first name or both names. While the effect was strongest for initials, subsequent data analysis revealed a significant effect even without the first and last initials.
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