9 ms·
Name-letter Effect
- breakingcups 9y agoI've discovered that many, many people will choose a (Android) lockscreen pattern that will closely resemble the first letter of their name.
- drostie 9y agoI may be an exception, I preferred 59273 because it reminded me of the Federation's logo (from Star Trek), but my name does not have an A in it.
- cgb223 9y agoProbably not a great idea to post your phone password on a public forum...
- pselbert 9y agoHe used the term "preferred", in the past tense. I think we can safely assume that he has a different passcode or device now.
- hervature 9y agoI think picking a passcode based on something other than pure randomness (let alone a TV show you like) is almost as bad.
- drostie 9y agoYep, that's why I changed it to a random one as soon as I found the site that randomizes such things.
- PascLeRasc 9y agoWhy? How do you know who he/she is?
- freehunter 9y agoThe likelihood that anyone who sees this will also ever have physical access to their phone is astronomical. My disk encryption password is 1223334. Doesn't do you much good when you have to be sitting in front of my computer to use it.
- OJFord 9y ago> The likelihood that anyone who sees this will also ever have physical access to their phone is astronomical. Presumably you mean (that likelihood)^{-1}.
- zulln 9y agoNot sure if I miss any sarcasm here, but why would you chose a such weak password for disk encryption?
- freehunter 9y agoWhy would I choose something I can’t remember? There are a couple of scenarios: either someone has all the time in the world to crack the password, in which case it doesn’t matter how complex it is. Or they don’t have a lot of time and are typing it in by hand, in which case guessing 1223334 is fairly unlikely.
- mistersquid 9y agoWhat about the following scenario? An associate (personal, professional, business, etc.) of yours knows your HN handle and has read your post, above. At some point, that associate is with you when you are using your computer. You briefly leave your machine unattended and unlocked for whatever reason (e.g. restroom). Your associate now may be able to compromise your security. Extending the above scenario: what happens when the above post draws the attention of people who decide to become an associate of yours after the fact (aka "spearphishing")?
- freehunter 9y agoYou’re right, I’m going to track him down and befriend him in person now that I know his passcode. That’s worth my time and money instead of, I don’t know, just beating him with a shovel until he tells me his password. Or picking a victim I already know. Or any other number of far more likely and easily executed schemes.
- kyberias 9y agoHow did you discover that?
- soared 9y agoHow much you like the letters in your name is used as an indirect method for measuring self esteem. If I really don't like the letters e,o,a,s,r, and d... then I probably don't like myself either. What’s really in a Name-Letter Effect? Name-letter preferences as indirect measures of self-esteem: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10463283.2014.980085 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10463283.2014.980...
- scotty79 9y agoHow can you like or dislike a letter?
- mcphage 9y agoSame way you like or dislike anything else.
- mc32 9y agoWhile I don't have a dislike for any letter, I do dislike a couple of decimal numbers, one of which is a birthday number. I prefer odds over evens.
- saghm 9y agoI've also found I prefer odds over evens; I'm not entirely sure why, but at least in terms of when there are an odd number of objects or visual markers in a row, I find it inherently satisfying that one of them is exactly halfway between the endpoints, and it slightly bothers me that with even numbers there isn't one.
- Jedd 9y ago> I prefer odds over evens. A few years ago someone told me that for anything other than within a especially formal garden design, most people prefer the visual of odd numbers of similar plants grouped together - from small bulbs planted at the scale of several centimetres, up to large trees planted at ten metres or more apart. Of course, how you identify what most people 'prefer' is challenging - it may be more a reflection of what looks natural or random. But, like how red cars are often spotted in groups of three, once I started noticing numbers of like plants clumped together, at various scales, it does seem to hold true. Your preference may be more deep-seated than at a purely integer level. :)
- chasing 9y agoMy name just uses all of the best letters. Objectively.
- scarmig 9y agoDo people also use letters that they like more than other letters? If so, an interesting proof of concept might be to reconstruct a person's full birth name from a corpus of their writing.
- jpttsn 9y agoI don't really know why I'm sharing this but I hate the letter M. When I start sentences, I tend to avoid it on a whim, to the detriment of being expressive. I realize starting sentences with "my" or "maybe" would be much more expressive, but I irrationally refrain from it.
- captn3m0 9y agomuphobia is the fear of the letter m.
- wingerlang 9y agoGoogle give very very few results. Feels like someone wanted to invent something and put it on a phobia-wiki then it became referenced from there. Could be wrong though.
- OJFord 9y agoMore likely, I would think, is that people rarely need to refer to muphobia, especially specifically muphobia, but that it is acceptable to refer to 'fear of the letter ~' by '≈phobia', where ≈ is the anglicised name of the Greek letter from which ~ is derived.
- wingerlang 9y agoIs there a legitimate list of phobias? I just don't think a fandom "phobia wiki" seems like a legitimate resource.
- 9y ago
- zkms 9y agoI wonder how this works with people who have gotten legal name changes, or people who regularly go by a non-legal name or a pseudonym.
- Pxtl 9y agoIt's actually in tfa - both the original and chosen names show the effect.
- incompatible 9y agoI asked somebody to give me three letters, they picked ABC. So much for that theory, I thought. Then I read a bit more and it said that it doesn't work on people who don't like themselves. It sounds like pop psychology, actually.
- coldtea 9y ago>It sounds like pop psychology, actually. Not if it's actually studied psychology and has been verified again and again in experiments. Besides, it doesn't work that way "gimme 3 letters", where ABC is a very easy and probable answer. And one random exchange with a sample of one and no controls ("I asked somebody") is not how you disqualify a theory ("so much for that theory").
- incompatible 9y agoSure, I wasn't entirely serious. I wonder how the test should be done. If somebody asked me for a few random letters, I'd have to ponder for some time about how to generate letters randomly. It would be easier if there was some (semi?)random input available, such as cars going past with various number plates.
- yorwba 9y agoWhether subjects are asked to rank all letters of the alphabet, rate each of the letters, choose the letter they prefer out of a set of two, or pick a small set of letters they most prefer, on average people consistently like the letters in their own name the most. Second sentence of the first paragraph.
- miguelrochefort 9y agoIs there a test I can take online for that?
- bad_hairpiece 9y agoIn a similar vein, research has found a positive correlation between the number of right letter QWERTY keys in a word and the positivity felt towards those words. Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3348452/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3348452/
- thaumasiotes 9y ago> subjects are not aware that they are choosing letters from their name This seems unlikely to be true as stated.
- sandcaaat 9y agoI created an account just to give you a vote. > Crucially, subjects are not aware that they are choosing letters from their name. That is asinine. By what mechanism can a researcher make someone forget how to spell their name? This is simply a theory that says "People are most comfortable and familiar with things which they are comfortable and familiar with." It's an essentially meaningless psychological observation.
- saagarjha 9y ago> Most people like themselves [Citation Needed]
- ebcode 9y agoseriously
- dogruck 9y agoLBJ
- shanavasm 9y agoSo, Name-Letter Effect should have influence in selecting letters for password too.
- ecesena 9y agoCan you imagine personalized ads choosing words with a prevalence of letters from your name?
- known 9y agoWhat about A E I O U
- mistersquid 9y agoYou posed a question without a question mark which makes me wonder presently, and sometimes, why?
- Illniyar 9y agoThe study method seems to be "rate the letters by how much you like them". While it looks like the study has been repeated enough to not be total quackery, there is still the question of what's the point. Does your preference for a particular letter has an effect on your choices? I doubt the research about people preferring brands with the names in their letters has properly ruled out other variables, or would prove to be significant. How many people actually give thought about what letters they like the most? I'm guessing the study was the first time the subjects were ever exposed to the thought of liking a letter. As such, ot seems reasonable to go for some point of reference that is simple and available, auch as your own name.
- ComodoHacker 9y agoThe article also mentions study of charity donations.
- Illniyar 9y agoSkimming the article for that study, I don't find anything wrong with it superficially, but while the effect might be statistically significant, they are tiny - I.E. from 4.2% of donors to 5.5% had K initial in Katrina, and 10% to 12% in Hurrican Mitch (though the data might be bad, since the actual data did not contain the exact information they needed). Also the effect was apparently not noticeable in Hurrican Rita. There is also no mention of the percent of people starting with the letter from the given population - since the dataset for before the hurricane was much smaller (Katrina- ~300 before, ~4000 after), it's very likely that the proportions of named individuals drifted to the average, as what happens in larger datasets. The number of hurricanes tested was also small - I.E. 3 , I'm not sure an effect can be inferred from such small numbers.
- ryanar 9y agoOne application of this is measuring implicit self-esteem. From the article, people who do not like themselves do not exhibit name letter preference. Also, people doing the name letter preference task do not realize they are choosing letters from their own name. As a result, this task can be used to measure how much implicit self-esteem or self-like one has
- tomasf 9y agoDoes this also mean that people tend to name their kids using letters from their own names? Would be interesting to check against some database.