Your name made you do it, though unconsciously, suggests new research that finds your name can negatively make you achieve less. Psychologists at Yale and the University of California, San Diego studying the unconscious influence of names say a preference for our own names and initials -- the "name-letter effect" -- can have some negative consequences. Students whose names begin with C or D get lower grades than those whose names begin with A or B; major league baseball players whose first or last names began with K (the strikeout-signifying letter) are significantly more likely tostrike out. Assistant professors Leif Nelson of UCSD and Joseph Simmons of Yale have conducted five studies over five years using information from thousands of individuals. "The conscious process is baseball players want to get a hit and students want to get A's," Nelson says. "So if you get a change in performance consistent with the name-letter effect, it clearly shows there must be some unconscious desire operating in the other direction." The researchers' work supports a series of studies published since 2002 that have found the "name-letter effect" causes people to make life choices based on names that resemble their own. Those studies by Brett Pelham, an associate professor at SUNY University, have found that people aredisproportionately likely to live in states or cities resembling their names, have careers that resemble their names and even marry those whose surnames begin with the same letter as their own. The _ , Pelham says, is that he has believed the name-letter effect would apply only to positive outcomes. Nelson and Simmons, he says, are "showing it applies more so to negative things than positive things." The researchers say the effect is definitely more than coincidence but is small nevertheless. "I know plenty of Chrises and Davids who have done very well in school," Simmons says. The new research is mainly about the relationship between one's   _  .
name and unconsciousness name and characteristics name and success sports and school achievements