ScienceDaily (Mar. 16, 2011) — What's in a name? Letters. And
psychologists have posited that the letters -- particularly the
first letter of our names -- can influence decisions, including
whom we marry and where we move. The effect is called "implicit
egotism." In 2008, two Belgian researchers found that workers in
their country were more likely to choose a workplace if the
first letter of its name matched their own. A commentary
published in and upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a
journal of the Association for Psychological Science, revisited
the study with similar U.S. data and found that the Belgians got
the cause and effect exactly backwards. And that might make us
more skeptical about the effects of implicit egotism. "Walt
Disney worked for a company starting with D not because of an
unconscious attraction to that letter," writes University of
Pennsylvania associate professor Uri Simonsohn, "but because he
so christened it." Simonsohn analyzed records of political
donations made during the 2004