Name-Letter Effect

The name-letter effect is the tendency of people to prefer the letters that appear in their own name over the other letters of the alphabet, whether they are asked to rank every letter, rate each one individually, choose between two letters, or pick out a small set of favorites; people consistently favor their own name's letters without being aware that this is what they are doing. Discovered in 1985 by the Belgian psychologist Jozef Nuttin, the effect has since been replicated across dozens of studies and more than fifteen countries using four different alphabets, and it holds regardless of age or gender; even people who changed their name years earlier still tend to prefer the letters of both their old and current names. The effect is strongest for a person's initials but persists, more weakly, even when initials are excluded, and a comparable effect has been found for the numbers in a person's birth date. Because the name is bound up with the self, most people who like themselves show the effect, while people who do not tend not to, and the Name Letter Preference Task built on this pattern is used in psychological assessment to estimate implicit self-esteem. There is some evidence the effect shapes real decisions, such as a disproportionate tendency for people to favor brands matching their initials or to donate to disaster relief after a storm whose name shares their own first letter, though research into its influence on bigger life decisions remains contested.