June 2005
Volume 18, Number 6
When Harry Met Hallie
Would a rose, by any other name, smell as sweet? It may depend whether your name is Roberta or Louise.
Twenty years ago, Belgian psychologist J. M. Nuttin discovered that people especially like the letters that appear in their own names but are generally unaware of the reason — a phenomenon he called the "name-letter effect." In the last few years, a research team led by Brett W. Pelham, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, has investigated the role that this and other self-associations (preferences for the numbers in one's birth date, for example) play in people's major life decisions.
"Our primary hypothesis was simple," the authors wrote in the article, "Implicit Egotism," in the April 2005 issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science. "If Dennis adores the letter D, then it might not be too far-fetched to expect Dennis to gravitate toward cities such as Denver, careers such as Dentistry, and romantic partners such as Denise."
In the article, Pelham and his colleagues Mauricio Carvallo, SUNY Buffalo, and John T. Jones, US Military Academy, West Point, summarized an extensive series of studies supporting the hypothesis that people unconsciously cleave to locales, careers, and romantic partners that somehow resemble the self.
One archival study showed that people disproportionately inhabit cities whose names feature the numbers in their own birth date; "Just as people born on February 2 (02-02) disproportionately inhabit cities with names such as Two Harbors, people born on May 5 (05-05) disproportionately inhabit cities with names such as Five Points." Other studies showed that self-associations like name letters guide people's preference for streets and states of residence. Women named Louise, for example, are disproportionately likely to live in Louisiana, even if they weren't born there. And statewide archival records show that implicit egotism is at work in our love lives: "People are disproportionately likely to marry others who happen to share their first or last initial."
Laboratory studies appear to confirm the role of implicit egotism in interpersonal attraction. In one experiment, male and female participants evaluated a young woman in a photograph wearing a jersey with either the number 16 or the number 24 on it. Prior to the evaluation, participants had engaged in a computerized task during which their name had been subliminally paired with one of these two numbers. "Participants liked the woman more ... when her jersey number had been subliminally paired with their own names," the author's wrote.
"I think we were most surprised at how well this phenomenon replicated outside the lab and how easy it was to capture the phenomenon in the lab," Pelham said. "I began the studies with low aspirations, but I was always impressed with how well the effect replicated."
Now, Pelham's team is turning attention to more mundane life choices. The researchers have recently found name-letter effects at work in people's preferences for certain products like candies and teas, for example. In an age of direct marketing, this is an area for which implicit-egotism research may have its most direct potential application: "Jeep dealers," Pelham said, "should send more targeted ads to people named Jason and Jennifer than to people named Eric or Mauricio."
Pelham freely admits that implicit egotism has figured in his own life choices. "I tried to get into an apartment on Pelham Street when I lived in LA, many years before we did this work, but the rent was too high."
Read the article online at www.psychologicalscience.org/journals.
