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Name Letter Effect
Definition
The name letter effect refers to people's tendency to favor the letters that are included in their names more than letters that are not in their names. In plain terms, people like the letters in their names better than they like the rest of the alphabet. Because the link between name letters and the self is arbitrary, the effect implies that anything that is associated with the self becomes automatically endowed with positive feelings.
History
The name letter effect was discovered in the 1980s by Belgian researcher Jozef Nuttin. Nuttin observed that people prefer their own name letters even when they do not consciously notice the link between name letters and the self. The name letter effect also occurs for infrequent alphabet letters, suggesting that it is ...
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