Abstract
The Name-Letter Effect states that people have a preference for brands, places, and even jobs that start with the same letter as their own first name. So Sam might like Snickers and live in Seattle. We use social network data from Twitter and Google+ to replicate this effect in a new environment. We find limited to no support for the Name-Letter Effect on social networks.We do, however, find a very robust Same-Name Effect where, say, Michaels would be more likely to link to other Michaels than Johns. This effect persists when accounting for gender, nationality, race, and age. The fundamentals behind these effects have implications beyond psychology as understanding how a positive self-image is transferred to other entities is important in domains ranging from studying homophily to personalized advertising and to link formation in social networks.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Bekkers, R.: George gives to geology jane: The name letter effect and incidental similarity cues in fundraising. International Journal of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Marketing 15(2), 172–180 (2010)
Brendl, C.M., Chattopadhyay, A., Pelham, B.W., Carvallo, M.: Name letter branding: Valence transfers when product specific needs are active. Journal of Consumer Research 32(3), 405–415 (2005)
Cha, M., Haddadi, H., Benevenuto, F., Gummadi, K.: Measuring User Influence in Twitter: The Million Follower Fallacy. In: ICWSM (2010)
Colman, A.M., Hargreaves, D.J., Sluckin, W.: Psychological factors affecting preferences for first names. Names: A Journal of Onomastics 28(2), 113–129 (1980)
Dyjas, O., Grasman, R.P., Wetzels, R., van der Maas, H.L., Wagenmakers, E.J.: What’s in a name: a bayesian hierarchical analysis of the name-letter effect. Frontiers in Psychology 3 (2012)
Fryer, R.G., Levitt, S.D.: The causes and consequences of distinctively black names. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 119(3) (2004)
Hargreaves, D.J., Colman, A.M., Sluckin, W.: The attractiveness of names. Human Relations 36(4) (1983)
Hodson, G., Olson, J.M.: Testing the generality of the name letter effect: Name initials and everyday attitudes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 31(8), 1099–1111 (2005)
Hoorens, V., Nuttin, J.M., Herman, I.E., Pavakanun, U.: Mastery pleasure versus mere ownership: A quasi-experimental cross-cultural and cross-alphabetical test of the name letter effect. European Journal of Social Psychology 20(3) (1990)
Johnson, B., Eagly, A.: Effects of involvement on persuasion: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin 106, 290–314 (1989)
Jones, J.T., Pelham, B.W., Carvallo, M., Mirenberg, M.C., et al.: How do i love thee? let me count the js: Implicit egotism and interpersonal attraction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 87, 665–683 (2004)
Kulshrestha, J., Kooti, F., Nikravesh, A., Gummadi, P.K.: Geographic dissection of the twitter network. In: ICWSM (2012)
Leary, M.R., Tangney, J.P. (eds.): Handbook of Self and Identity, 2nd edn. The Guilford Press (2011)
Lebel, E.P., Paunonen, S.V.: Sexy but often unreliable: The impact of unreliability on the replicability of experimental findings with implicit measures. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 37(4), 570–583 (2011)
Magno, G., Comarela, G., Saez-Trumper, D., Cha, M., Almeida, V.: New kid on the block: exploring the google+ social graph. In: Proceedings of the 2012 ACM Conference on Internet Measurement Conference, pp. 159–170. ACM, New York (2012)
Magno, G., Weber, I.: International gender differences and gaps in online social networks. In: SocInfo (2014)
McCullough, B., McWilliams, T.P.: Baseball players with the initial “k” do not strike out more often. Journal of Applied Statistics 37(6), 881–891 (2010)
Nuttin, J.M.: Narcissism beyond gestalt and awareness: The name letter effect. European Journal of Social Psychology 15(3), 353–361 (1985)
Nuttin, J.M.: Affective consequences of mere ownership: The name letter effect in twelve european languages. European Journal of Social Psychology 17(4), 381–402 (1987)
Pelham, B.W., Carvallo, M., Jones, J.T.: Implicit egotism. Current Directions in Psychological Science 14(2), 106–110 (2005)
Pelham, B.W., Mirenberg, M.C., Jones, J.T.: Why susie sells seashells by the seashore: implicit egotism and major life decisions. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 82(4), 469–487 (2002), http://www.biomedsearch.com/nih/Why-Susie-sells-seashells-by/11999918.html
Simonsohn, U.: In defense of diligence: a rejoinder to pelham and carvallo. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 101(1), 31–33 (2011)
Simonsohn, U.: Spurious? name similarity effects (implicit egotism) in marriage, job, and moving decisions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 101(1), 1–24 (2011)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kooti, F., Magno, G., Weber, I. (2014). The Social Name-Letter Effect on Online Social Networks. In: Aiello, L.M., McFarland, D. (eds) Social Informatics. SocInfo 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8851. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13734-6_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13734-6_15
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-13733-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-13734-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)