Unpopular first names evoke negative interpersonal reactions, which in turn influence people’s life outcomes for the worse, conclude Jochen E. Gebauer and colleagues. They studied first choices that over 12,000 people made through online dating services.
Across a series of three studies, negatively named individuals were more neglected by other online-daters, as indicated by fewer first visits to their dating profiles.
This form of neglect arguably mirrors a name-based life history of neglect, discrimination, prejudice, or even ostracism.
Supporting this argument, neglect mediated the relation between negative names and lower self-esteem, more frequent smoking, and less education.
Nicholas Christenfeld and Britta Larsen point out that it is difficult to distinguish whether measurement of life outcomes reflect causality or correlation. For example, asnwering the question: Does the assigning of the name or raising of the person with that name by the namer lead to life outcomes?
They point out that economists with the first letters of family names are more likely to be tenured at top departments, to be fellows of the Econometric Society, and, perhaps even to win the Nobel Memorial Prize (Einav & Yariv, 2006).
Similar effects of names have been reported for choosing a mate, finding employment, and other life activities.
I wonder what affect the name of a person and of a school (irrespective of its reputation) has on the distribution of school academic performance outcomes? It seems as though someone has studied this question. Please point me to sources? I'm curious.
Across a series of three studies, negatively named individuals were more neglected by other online-daters, as indicated by fewer first visits to their dating profiles.
This form of neglect arguably mirrors a name-based life history of neglect, discrimination, prejudice, or even ostracism.
Supporting this argument, neglect mediated the relation between negative names and lower self-esteem, more frequent smoking, and less education.
Nicholas Christenfeld and Britta Larsen point out that it is difficult to distinguish whether measurement of life outcomes reflect causality or correlation. For example, asnwering the question: Does the assigning of the name or raising of the person with that name by the namer lead to life outcomes?
They point out that economists with the first letters of family names are more likely to be tenured at top departments, to be fellows of the Econometric Society, and, perhaps even to win the Nobel Memorial Prize (Einav & Yariv, 2006).
Similar effects of names have been reported for choosing a mate, finding employment, and other life activities.
I wonder what affect the name of a person and of a school (irrespective of its reputation) has on the distribution of school academic performance outcomes? It seems as though someone has studied this question. Please point me to sources? I'm curious.