Do you like your own name? How about your initials? Chances are that you do, because
people have a tendency to like things that remind them of themselves. In fact, this liking
for one's name or initials is actually strong enough to influence our behavior in ways that
generate a match between our own name and the things that we choose for ourselves.
When all else is equal, Dennis is just a little more likely to become a dentist than Toby,
while Toby is a little more likely to drive a Toyota than Dennis.
Does this tendency, known as the name-letter effect, happen consciously, or
unconsciously? Professors Leif Nelson and Joseph Simmons came up with a clever way
to find out. They decided to examine whether the name-letter effect would hold true for
things a person would consciously choose to avoid. If the name-letter effect was still
observed in such situations, that would be good evidence t...
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