What’s really in a Name-Letter Effect? Name-letter preferences as indirect measures of self-esteem.

People show a preference for the letters occurring in their name (Name-Letter Effect), a phenomenon that has inspired the development of a frequently used indirect measure of self-esteem. This article reviews the literature on the Name-Letter Effect as the basis for this measure. It discusses the ta...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:European Review of Social Psychology Vol. 25; no. 1; pp. 228 - 263
Main Author: Hoorens, Vera
Format: Article
Published: Taylor & Francis Ltd 2014
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        10.1080/10463283.2014.980085
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        atl: What’s really in a Name-Letter Effect? Name-letter preferences as indirect measures of self-esteem.
      aug:
        au: Hoorens, Vera
        affil: Centre for Social and Cultural Psychology, Leuven University, 3000Leuven, Belgium
      su:
        Self-esteem
        Personal names
        Social psychology research
        Self-confidence
        Psychology
        Algorithm research
      sug:
        subj:
          Self-esteem
          Personal names
          Social psychology research
          Self-confidence
          Psychology
          Algorithm research
      keyword:
        Implicit measures
        Indirect measures
        Mere ownership
        Name-letter effect
        Implicit measures
        Indirect measures
        Mere ownership
        Name-letter effect
      ab: People show a preference for the letters occurring in their name (Name-Letter Effect), a phenomenon that has inspired the development of a frequently used indirect measure of self-esteem. This article reviews the literature on the Name-Letter Effect as the basis for this measure. It discusses the tasks that have been used to measure name-letter preferences and the algorithms that have been designed to extract self-esteem scores from them. It also reviews the evidence that name-letter preferences are valid indicators of self-esteem. The article shows that current knowledge on the value of name-letter preferences as measures of self-esteem is limited by (a) the inherent difficulty of assessing the validity of implicit measures, (b) the use of different, insufficiently justified algorithms, (c) a historical focus on preferences for initials, and (d) neglect of the state–trait distinction. The article ends with recommendations for the use of name-letter preferences to measure self-esteem.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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