Insightology

Do names have an impact on performance? How about initials? Would major league baseball players with the initial K strikeout more than others? Would people with intials C or D perform worse in class? Are people with white or black sounding names likely to be more or less successful in life? Interesting research has been done in both the areas of initials and names and the results are seemingly contradictory.

The research on initials (Nelson and Simmons) relies on a previously demonstrated effect known as the Name Letter Effect, which shows that people like their names and initials enough that they pursue life outcomes and partners with names that resemble themselves. To show that this effect happens unconsciously the researchers decided to look at outcomes that specific people are very unlikely to consciously pursue. Enter strikeouts in baseball commonly designated by the letter K. Hitters unquestionably want to avoid striking out. But looking at 90 years of major league data, the researchers found that those with first or last names starting with K were more likely to strikeout than others! In fact, strikeouts are more common for K-names than for names starting with any other letter in the alphabet.

Moving over from baseball to academics, the researchers found that MBA students whose names began with a C or D scored lower GPAs than those with names starting with A or B. Clearly this happens unconsciously as graduate management students would not be expected to consciously choose to get lower grades. A similar effect is seen in the quality of law school that students choose to attend. An analysis of data from 170 law schools across the country shows that people with A or B initials tend to go to better law schools than those with initials C or D. The researchers further show through an experiment that just by matching the prize for failure with a person's initial, lower performance can be elicited.

Is there any benefit to giving a name starting with A or B compared with any of the other more neutral letters of the alphabet? Apparently not. One reason could be that positive outcomes (such as hitting or higher GPA) cannot be improved upon because they are much harder than the negative outcomes and are unlikely to be affected by subtle psychological effects.

Let's now consider another study that seems to point in a different direction. In their popular book Freakonomics, the authors Levitt and Dubner explore the impact of names on life outcomes. They find, for example, that a person with a distinctively black name does have a worse life outcome than one with a white sounding name. But, based on their analysis of an extensive dataset,  they argue that this has nothing to do with the name per se, it's just that the life circumstances of the parent who gives a black sounding name is considerably worse.

They go on to look at the names of children whose parents have varying levels of education (implying affluence or success) and find that names appear to be a signaling mechanism for parents. Those who want their children to be successful use names that they perceive as denoting success. Hence the data show that the most popular names among higher end parents (such as Brittany or Amber) migrate to lower end parents over time as the latter look for signals to send. So while there are clearly differences in life outcomes of people with different names, the authors argue it has nothing to do with the names and has everything to do with which parents choose which names for their children and for what reason.

Are these two sets of research contradictory? Perhaps not. One could argue that while initials are subconscious entities, names are more conscious entities. So it is quite possible they have differing impact on a person that could be seemingly contradictory.  

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything was written by Steven Leavitt and Stephen Dubner. Steven Leavitt is Alvin Baum Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. He won the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded every two years to the best American economist under forty. Stephen Dubner writes for the New York Times and The New Yorker and is a best-selling author.  The research on name initials was conducted by Leif Nelson and Joseph Simmons. Leif Nelson is Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of San Diego and Joseph Simmons is Assistant Professor of Marketing at Yale University.