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Alex P. Keaton and Michael J. Fox were on to something -- middle initials make people think you're smarter, a new study suggests.
Thinking of finding a new job or applying to grad school? You might want to add a middle initial to your name.
Wijnand A. P. van Tilburg (there’s a name with authority) and Eric R. Igou of the universities of Limerick in Ireland, and Southampton in the United Kingdom, respectively, reported in the European Journal of Social Psychology that when it comes to perceptions of one’s intellectual heft, initials give a boost.
In a set of experiments with more than 500 participants, people rated writing by "David F. Clark" as better than the exact same text written by “David Clark.” Even better? “David F.P.R. Clark."
Use of at least one middle initial set up a bias in the brains of the participants — the authors speculate that because middle initials often appear in formal contexts, such as on diplomas, seeing the initial gave the impression of higher status. This extra status then influenced the perception of the person’s writing and knowledge.
Names and initials are important. Psychologists studying what’s called the “name-letter effect” have shown that our initials can help determine what products we buy, even what careers we are more likely to choose, mainly because we develop an affinity for our own initials. This affinity is transferred to products, people and places that share similar initials.
Last year, for example, a team from the University of Wisconsin School of Business showed that when people in a group shared initials, they had higher work quality.
A famous but controversial 1999 study from psychologists at the University of California San Diego found that people whose initials spelled out “negative” words like D.I.E. and P.I.G. died at younger ages than those whose initials spelled out “positive” words like V.I.P.
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