15. Your Name Determines What You Buy And Do, And You Need To Know

This claim is very credible and there is extensive literature on the subject. In particular, there is an article written by Frederik Anseel and Wouter Duyck which validates the claim made in the *Cracked* article in respect to the Name-Letter Effect and how it influences where one might choose to work as well as career of choice.
 Anseel and Duyck obtained information from the Belgian Social Security Administration containing the names of 1/3 of all the employees working in the private sector in Belgium, with their aim being to determine if the employees' choice of employment could be statistically proven to be linked to the N.L.E. Anseel and Duyck confirmed the N.L.E was a factor, and the numbers support that these people were more likely to choose employment with companies with matching initials, with rarer initials have a greater likelihood(Anseel & Duyck, 2008). Overall, the authors discovered that the same-letter matches were 11.84% higher that projected at the start of the study(Anseel & Duyck, 2008).

There is also an article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science which speaks to the Implicit Egotism claim. In the article Implicit Egotism, Pelham, Carvallo, & Jones state that implicit egotism is a tendency to live in places and associate with people who resemble the self (2005). The authors cite the work previously done by men such as Jozef Nuttin, credited with the origination of the N.L.E. theory, and take it a step further. They found that people were found to live states in the U.S. that most resembled their names (e.g. Louise and Louisiana or Virginia and Virginia). Pelham et al., found this out by examining the Social Security Death Index. It was discovered that when these people registered for Social Security as adults, the results supported that people more often inhabited states that were similar to their own names. In addition to that, the authors of Implicit Egotism also found evidence that people are also more inclined to associate and be attracted to people with whom shared initials are found. These findings back up the statements made in the Cracked article concerning implicit egotism and it’s influence on judgments that dictate our associations in society.

Here’s the link to the article Name-Letter Effect article: http://web.b.ebscohost.com.libprox1.slcc.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=11&sid=e5b7258a-ee9a-4178-bd5a-86226cffed35%40sessionmgr111&hid=128&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=35068858&db=aph

Here's the link to the Implicit Egotism study: http://web.b.ebscohost.com.libprox1.slcc.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=13&sid=e5b7258a-ee9a-4178-bd5a-86226cffed35%40sessionmgr111&hid=128