Middle name initials often appear in formal contexts, especially when people refer to intellectual achievements. On the basis of this common link, the display of middle initials increases positive evaluations of people's intellectual capacities and achievements. We document this effect in seven studies: Middle initials in authors' names increased the evaluation of their writing performance (Study 1), and middle initials increased perceptions of status (Studies 2 and 4). Moreover, the middle initials effect was specific to intellectual performance (Studies 3 and 6), and it was mediated by perceived status (Studies 5–7). Besides supporting our hypotheses, the results of these studies yield important implication for everyday life. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. ||||| The idea that names have power is a staple of mythology and a cliché in genre fiction; in both, though, it’s a proxy that represents the essential nature of a person or thing. (To wit: the eponymous main character in Orson Scott Card’s magnum opus, Ender’s Game, lives up to his name by the end of the narrative. No spoilers.) 
 
 In a more tangible sense, one might say that names fit—or perhaps grow to fit—a person’s perceived nature. As it turns out, new research published in the European Journal of Social Psychology has found that there’s some truth to the idea. Psychologists Wijnand A. P. van Tilburg and Eric R. Igou argue that middle initials in author’s names “increased the evaluation of their writing performance, and middle initials increased perceptions of status,” they write. “Moreover,” they continue, “the middle initials effect was specific to intellectual performance, and it was mediated by perceived status.” In other words, the presence of middle initials appears to add intellectual heft, “increas[ing] positive evaluations of people’s intellectual capacities and achievements.” Van Tilburg and Igou began their investigation because of the link they saw between middle initials and their use in formal contexts, especially when referring to intellectual achievements. 
 
 In January, Nicholas Kristof, a columnist at the New York Times, published a blog post wherein he publicly left his middle initial behind for the New Year. “[W]hen I started at the Times in the business section in 1984, I wore a business suit and the middle initial was a nice accoutrement to pinstripes,” he wrote, “now I wear an open collar, and I don’t need the middle initial any more than a necktie.” Perhaps he’s right—but if you don’t happen to be a Times journalist, it might be time to reconsider your byline. ||||| Imagine that you are evaluating two equally suitable job candidates’ applications for a position in your successful yogurt company. Both make equally impressive claims about their potential future contributions, and you are left with a difficult decision: Should you rather hire Chen Meina, or Shobha Bhattacharya? 
 
 
 
 People often face situations like this, where decisions need to be made, even with limited knowledge. For instance, if I told you that turtles are deaf, unless you are an expert in sea-dwelling reptiles, you probably have little information to help you decide whether the statement is true or false. However, we often simply feel that something is true. The comedian, Stephen Colbert, named this gut feeling “truthiness”: “truth that comes from the gut, not books.” Psychological research has shown that even unrelated information can influence our decisions and feelings of truthiness: For example, you are more likely to agree with the statement “Turtles are deaf” if that claim is paired with a photograph of a turtle. 
 
 
 
 So, you face a decision between two remarkably similar job candidates, who are very similar apart from their names. You have very limited information on which to base your decision; what information are you going to use to help you decide? Could their names influence your decision? A team of researchers from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Canada, led by Dr. Eryn Newman, asked precisely this question: To what extent are our evaluations of people’s credibility swayed by how easily we can pronounce their names? 
 
 
 
 In a new study, published in PLoS ONE, the researchers asked undergraduate volunteers to rate the pronounceability of real names from 18 countries, and then used these ratings to generate a set of difficult to pronounce names, such as Yevgeni Dherzhinsky, and a set of easy names, such as Putali Angami. 
 
 
 
 The researchers then told a new group of undergraduate participants that some international students had listed their favorite trivia statements, such as “Giraffes are the only mammals that cannot jump,” and that the participants’ task would be to read some of those statements, and report whether they thought that the statements were true or false. Importantly, each trivia statement was paired with a difficult to pronounce name (“Yevgeni Dherzhinsky said:”), or an easy name, from the sets generated earlier. 
 
 
 
 The authors hypothesized that claims paired with easy names would be rated as true more often than claims paired with difficult names. The results supported the authors’ hypothesis: Difficult to pronounce names led to near-chance “true” responses, whereas statements paired with easy names elicited more “true” responses. The results from this study clearly show that the pronounceability of people’s names can influence the “truthiness” we feel when evaluating their claims: We seem to believe Putali Angami and Bodo Wallmeyer more than Shobha Bhattacharya and Yevgeny Dherzhinsky. Keep this in mind the next time you are about to purchase a car: Although you feel like you agree with her, perhaps that rusty Cadillac from 1981 isn’t the hidden treasure that your salesperson, Mary, claims it to be. 
 
 
 
 The pronounceability of people’s names affect more than just the perceived truthiness of statements attributed to those names. In other experiments, using the same names, Dr. Newman and colleagues asked participants to rate the names on their perceived familiarity, riskiness, and how dangerous the owners of those names seem. The results from these experiments showed that people with easier to pronounce names were judged as more familiar, less risky and less dangerous than individuals with difficult to pronounce names. So, who would you pick as your tandem skydiving partner, Bodo or Czeslaw? If you are anything like most English speaking people, you would be likely to prefer jumping out of the plane with Bodo. If, on the other hand, you find Polish easier to pronounce, you would probably choose to jump with Czeslaw. 
 
 
 
 This finding should perhaps raise concerns among people who might find them at the receiving end of such unconscious biases, such as immigrants. In another recent study, researchers from the Institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn, Germany, examined how well immigrants to the United States in the early 1900s fared in the labor market. Many of these immigrants chose to Americanize their names by, for example, changing their first name from Artyom to William. The researchers found that immigrants who Americanized their names fared better in the labor market and achieved higher incomes. 
 
 
 
 As a recent immigrant to the United States, I wonder whether I should worry about the potential negative implications of my name on my future career success. At the very least, as Dr. Newman and her colleagues’ results suggest: People might find this article to be more credible if I had a different name. Or, as I like to think, you are less likely to go skydiving with me than you would be if my name was Brad Pitt. 
 
 
 
 However, the impact of a name’s pronounceability is not limited to how we assess other people—our judgments about products and companies are biased by their names as well. Other researchers have found that shares with easy to pronounce names, such as “Clearman.” perform better in the stock market than shares with difficult to pronounce names, such as “Mextskry.” Yet another study showed that food additives with difficult to pronounce names (“Hnegripitrom”) are perceived as more harmful than additives with easier names (“Magnalroxate”). 
 
 
 
 Awareness of our hidden biases is important not only for the fair treatment of job applicants (and food additives), but can also be a matter of severe consequences. As Dr. Newman and colleagues ask: “Would the pronounceability of eyewitnesses’ names shape jury verdicts?” 
 
 
 
 So, you are trying to decide whether to hire Chen Meina, or Shobha Bhattacharya. If you find yourself favoring one over the other, with no information to support your intuition—or feeling of “truthiness”—these studies suggest that one reason for your preference is that you simply find this name easier to pronounce. 
 
 
 
 Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? And have you read a recent peer-reviewed paper that you would like to write about? Please send suggestions to Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and regular contributor to NewYorker.com. Gareth is also the series editor of Best American Infographics, and can be reached at garethideas AT gmail.com or Twitter @garethideas. ||||| You can’t choose the name you're given without going to court, but you can shake things up by adding a middle initial. New evidence suggests that, if you’re trying to convey intelligence, that might not be a bad idea. In a study published last week in the European Journal of Social Psychology, Wijnana A.P. van Tilburg, a psychologist at the University of Southampton, and Eric R. Igou, a psychologist at the University of Limerick, designed a series of experiments to explore how middle initials affect perceptions of intellect. Van Tilburg and Igou suspected that the presence of middle initials would make people seem smarter, because we tend to see middle initials in prestigious contexts—bylines in academic journals, to take a pertinent example, or correspondence from doctors or lawyers. 
 
 In one experiment, van Tilburg and Igou recruited 85 students from the University of Limerick and assigned them to read the same piece of text—a non-technical description of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity—and rank the writing ability of the author on a scale of one to seven. The students were assigned to one of four groups; for each group, the author’s name was displayed as either David Clark, David F. Clark, David F.P. Clark, or David F.P.R. Clark. As Wijnana and Igou predicted, the students thought David F. Clark, who scored an average of 5.8, was a better writer than David Clark, who got a 4.92. With a mean score of 6, Mr. F.P.R. Clark was considered the best writer of all. In another experiment involved in the study, the psychologists gave students the option of joining a team whose members were listed either with or without middle initials. Students more often opted for the middle-initials team, if the competition hinged on something intellectual—a quiz about literature, for instance—but not if they were joining an athletic team. 
 
 How does the presence of middle initials stack up with other affectations, like a “van” or a “von”? (Is it a coincidence that Wijnana A.P. van Tilburg designed this study?) By having students guess the social status of people with different variations of the same name, the researchers were able to compare the effects of middle initials, an “infix” like “van,” or an extra syllable. Students guessed the status of people described by four names: a standard one, like “David Mitchell”; a name with an “infix,” like “David van Mitchell”; a name with middle initials—“David F.P.R. Mitchell”; or a name with an extra syllable tacked on, like “David Mitchellson.” Students were most impressed by Mr. F.P.R. Mitchell, followed by van Mitchell, Mitchellson, and finally, plain old Mitchell. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 It’s been a big week for names research. (The most significant name-related research of the year is still Gregory Clark's book on how surnames can influence social standing for generations.) Another new study, this one appearing in the journal PLOS ONE, found that people with easy-to-pronounce names are considered more credible. Psychologists at the University of Queensland in Australia had students rate the “pronounceability” of first and last names from 18 countries, then recombined them to generate 218 foreign-sounding names whose pronounceability they could quantify. Difficult-to-pronounce names, according to this scale, included “Czeslaw Ratynska” and “Hur Hye-seong”; easy to pronounce names included “Amira El-Naggar” and “Lubov Ershova.” The psychologists read the students various statements, like “Turtles are deaf,” and told them they were the favorite trivia facts of people bearing either easy or hard-to-pronounce names. It turned out students were more likely to believe the statements were true if they were attributed to someone with an easy-to-pronounce name. In another part of the study, students were told to select a tour guide who would make them feel safe in a dangerous situation. Based only on a list of names, the students were asked to rank how safe they would feel with each guide—and, in keeping with the researchers’ hypothesis, they preferred tour guides whose names they could pronounce.
– Want to be seen as an intellectual? Here's an easy first step: Start using your middle initial in writing. Doing so, a study finds, boosts "positive evaluations of people's intellectual capacities and achievements." The study—run by researchers Wijnand A.P. van Tilburg and Eric R. Igou, who appear to be taking their own advice—focused on writing, Time reports. The investigators reached their conclusions after giving subjects a scientific article attributed to, variously, David Clark, David F. Clark, David F.P. Clark, or David F.P.R. Clark, the New Republic reports. David F.P.R. Clark fared best in subjects' assessments of the author's ability, while David F. Clark still beat David Clark. Also helpful, when it comes to names: ease of pronunciation, another study finds. Subjects were given trivia statements (like "giraffes are the only mammals that cannot jump"), which were associated with various names. The statements linked to names considered easier to pronounce were more trusted by subjects, Scientific American reports. A study on company names had similar results. Firms with easier-to-pronounce names apparently do better in the stock market, the magazine notes. (One name you definitely want to avoid? God.)