Initial Success

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, at least according to William Shakespeare. But according to researchers at the University of California, San Diego and Yale University our names, and specifically our initials, do have a subconscious impact on how many people perform athletically and academically.

Using different testing scenarios, Leif Nelson at the University of California, San Diego and colleague Joseph Simmons from Yale University found that liking your own name overly much can sabotage success for people whose initials match negative performance labels. The results of their study are currently in press and are to be released in the December 2007 issue of Psychological Science.

The paper's abstract is as follows:

In five studies, we found that people like their names enough to unconsciously pursue consciously avoided outcomes that resemble their names. Baseball players avoid strikeouts, but players whose names begin with the strikeout-signifying letter K strike out more than others (Study 1). All students want As, but students whose names begin with letters associated with poorer performance (C and D) achieve lower grade point averages (GPAs) than do students whose names begin with A and B (Study 2), especially if they like their initials (Study 3). Because lower GPAs lead to lesser graduate schools, students whose names begin with the letters C and D attend lower-ranked law schools than students whose names begin with A and B (Study 4). Finally, in an experimental study, we manipulated congruence between participants' initials and the labels of prizes and found that participants solve fewer anagrams when a consolation prize shares their first initial than when it does not (Study 5). These findings provide striking evidence that unconsciously desiring negative name-resembling performance outcomes can insidiously undermine the more conscious pursuit of positive outcomes.