One of the most important
decisions that we can make is what company we will work for.
There are a number of factors to consider when making this
decision, including salary, benefits and work location.
However, there may also be less-obvious factors in play that
sway our decision, and without us even knowing it. It is well
known that unconscious thoughts can influence certain aspects of
our behavior. An intriguing example of this is the "name-letter
effect," a phenomenon which shows that we have a preference for
things that begin with the same letter as our first name.
Psychologists Frederik Anseel and Wouter Duyck from Ghent
University (Belgium) were interested in testing the extent of
the name-letter effect and if it is potent enough to affect
where we choose to work.
The psychologists analyzed a database
containing information about Belgian employees who work full-
time. More specifically, the researchers looked at the
employees' name and how often their first initial matched the
first letter of their company's name. The researchers estimated
the expected number of these matches (using a probability
calculation) and compared that to what they actually observed.
In a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of
the Association for Psychological Science, the psychologists
found that there is indeed a name-letter effect between employee
names and the company they work for.
There were 12% more matches
than was expected based on the probability estimate. The
researchers noted that "hence, for about one in nine people
whose initials matched their company's initial, choice of
employer seems to have been influenced by the fact that the
letters matched." In addition, when the psychologists looked
across all letters, they found that this effect occurred with
every letter of the alphabet, but was more apparent for rarer
initials.
The authors concluded that they "have demonstrated that people
are more likely to work for companies with initials matching
their own than to work for companies with other initials."
Press Release collected at Science Daily.
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However, there may also be less-obvious factors in play that
sway our decision, and without us even knowing it. It is well
known that unconscious thoughts can influence certain aspects of
our behavior. An intriguing example of this is the "name-letter
effect," a phenomenon which shows that we have a preference for
things that begin with the same letter as our first name.
