Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Name-letter effect/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 11:13, 18 June 2017.

Name-letter effect

 * Nominator(s): Edwininlondon (talk) 05:32, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

This article is about an interesting effect from psychology: it turns out that people tend to, unknowingly, prefer letters from their own name. I have documented the origin and current state of research into the effect, as well as the research into wider implications into real life, e.g., Does St. Louis have a disproportional number of residents called Louis? Do baseball players with a 'K' in their name strike out more often than those who don't? Were people called Kate or Kyle over-represented in the list of people who donated to disaster relief after hurricane Katrina? I look forward to your comments to improve the article. Edwininlondon (talk) 05:32, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Support A fascinating article, well researched and clearly written. One very minor quibble is that multiple references should be in numerical order, several instances where that is not the case Jimfbleak - talk to me?  15:08, 26 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your kind words, Jimfbleak. I have put the ones you refer to in the right chronological order now. Good spot. Thanks Edwininlondon (talk) 21:24, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

image is appropriately licensed. Nikkimaria (talk) 17:25, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

Support Comments by Finetooth on prose

 * This is a fascinating article, well-written and apparently comprehensive. I found a small number of MOS glitches, noted below.


 * Lede
 * ¶3 "In the lab, people disproportionally favor brands matching their initials." – Should that be "disproportionately"?


 * Background
 * ¶1 "While there wasn't a great deal of agreement..." – The MOS prefers "was not".
 * ¶3 and ¶4 "Stimulus" and "stimuli" link to the same article. You probably don't need both links.


 * First study: Discussion
 * ¶1 "Nuttin concluded the experiments showed that..." – Perhaps smoother as "Nuttin concluded that the experiments showed that...".


 * Mere exposure
 * ¶1 "showed that mere exposure can't be the cause..." – Another contraction.


 * Mastery pleasure
 * ¶1 "They found the time students had learned the second alphabet made no difference to the strength... " – This bumped a little. Maybe "They found that the time at which students had learned the second alphabet made no difference in the strength..."


 * Implicit self-esteem
 * ¶1 "a person's disposition to evaluate themselves" – Singular-plural disagreement here and two sentences later: "when a person recognizes the letters in their name...". Maybe substituting "his or her" for "them, their"? Or recasting if you don't like the awkwardness of "her or his".


 * Application
 * ¶4 "Stieger, Voracek, and Formann recommend that the task is administered twice..." – "Be" rather than "is"?


 * In the lab
 * ¶1 "He found that people were disproportionally more..." – "Disproportionately"?
 * ¶1 "an individual's name-letter effect and the strength of their name-letter-branding effect..." – Another singular-plural mismatch: individual-their.


 * Controversial studies
 * ¶2 "a disproportionally high number of dentists..." and " for disproportionally more "Den" dentists" – "Disproportionately"?
 * ¶3 "a disproportionally large number..." – another instance
 * ¶4 "However, Dyjas et al. disputed people gravitate towards cities of their surname..." – A bit smoother if you insert "that" before "people".


 * Footnotes
 * C "The exceptions being a study by Albers, Rotteveel, and Dijksterhuis, and one by Stieger, Preyss, and Voracek." – "Are" rather than "being"?
 * F "That is, an adult's name is read or written a very small amount compared to all other words." – "Infrequently" rather than "a very small amount"?
 * L "Similarly, Smith found statistical errors had led Abel and Kruger wrongly conclude that..." – Missing word "to" before "conclude"?
 * That's all. Finetooth (talk) 03:34, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your kind words and helpful comments. I have addressed all of them. Thanks. Edwininlondon (talk) 20:16, 1 June 2017 (UTC)
 * All looks good. I'm happy to support, as noted above. Finetooth (talk) 21:08, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

Source review from

 * I randomly googled three sentences and nothing showed up except mirrors.
 * Earwig's tool shows a couple of spots of concern that should probably be looked at and corrected. They aren't terribly serious but a bit of rewording will keep them from being brought up later.
 * Otherwise everything looks good. Ealdgyth - Talk 11:36, 2 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you for being so kind to take the effort and check. It seems Earwig is highlighting mostly titles and fragments, none seem serious indeed, but I did change the wording of the biggest matching string. Edwininlondon (talk) 15:42, 3 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Yeah, didn't figure it was a bit issue, but better to tweak now than have a mob after you if its on the main page. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:08, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Comments by Wehwalt

 * It strikes me that the first paragraph would benefit from splitting, possibly at the word "Discovered"
 * Yes, that looks better.
 * "The infrequent letters QXYZ were never used as non-name letters." this seems contradicted by the next paragraph. Also in English, Y is hardly infrequent, at least if you ask the makers of Scrabble.
 * I made it clear it is infrequent in Dutch. Also removed the first mention, as it was confusing matters.
 * Were the university students also Dutch speakers?
 * Yes. Added.
 * More soon. Seems very well written on a subject I had not given much thought to.--Wehwalt (talk) 04:40, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you. Edwininlondon (talk) 09:57, 4 June 2017 (UTC)
 * "partner-name letters" This may be unclear to those reading first time through, though you discuss a "halo effect", it is later in the article.
 * I guess I have created confusion by using "partner" in 2 different ways: first it refers to the other test subject, yoked to the first. Later, in the implicit self-esteem section, it refers to a spouse. I have changed the wording for the first case.
 * "school children to students" I imagine you mean university students here for students. American English doesn't draw a clear distinction between schoolchildren and students, so you may slightly confuse or mislead the reader.
 * Done
 * " In all cases a name-letter effect was found.[27][36][35]" citations should be in numerical order.
 * Done
 * "The effect is thought to arise from unconscious, automatic processes of self-evaluation, with different research groups coming at it from two different angles." I think a citation is needed at least for the first half of the sentence.
 * Done
 * "The effect was found to be weaker in the second alphabet" I don't think you mention this when you discuss the matter more fully a few paragraphs before, and this should probably be stated then (you only mention it was found in the second language). Why is it necessary to recap the Cyrillic and Thai studies in such detail when the original mention is so close before?  Does not a mention suffice?
 * I don't think it's a recap, but happy to change things if to you it seems so. It's not so much about the studies, more about the points they make: In Mastery pleasure it is about the timing, here about connectedness to the self. If you feel it is repetitive I could put the Thai-English study in Mastery pleasure in a footnote, or put the one here in a footnote.
 * "Unconscious self-regulation" do we have a suitable article for link here?
 * Linked
 * Up to the start of "reception", will continue soon.--Wehwalt (talk) 05:40, 6 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Back at it.
 * "(e.g., Judy did not like things starting with J, such as jam, more than Doug)" this is ambiguous, does Doug like stuff or does Judy like Doug?
 * Reworded
 * "(recorded on the scoreboard with a 'K')" Although it may be shown on the scoreboard, it would more likely be recorded in the scorebook, or on a scorecard.
 * Reworded
 * "They reported that today's Smiths still tend to have the physical capabilities of their ancestors who were smiths." possibility this overstates the case. Some guy named Smith, the muscles on his brawny arms are strong as iron bands? It may be in the ambiguity of the word "capabilities". I gather that what is meant is that Smith could still do it if he was swinging a hammer all day every day from the age of 14, but it also could mean that Smith could right now grab a hammer and have at it.
 * Reworded into: They reported that today's Smiths, whose ancestors once were smiths, have higher than expected ratings for strength-related activities.
 * That's it.--Wehwalt (talk) 21:38, 7 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much for your detailed comments. Edwininlondon (talk) 06:49, 10 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Support Very well done. Quite scholarly.--Wehwalt (talk) 07:29, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

Support Comments by Moisejp
Background:
 * "Systematic letter-preference research began in 1959 with brand-preference studies by Mecherikoff and Horton." Would it be an idea to include their first names and job title as a mini-introduction to who they were (although "researcher" probably wouldn't be ideal since "research" is already used in the sentence)?"
 * That would certainly be an idea. I tweaked the wording a bit so I can call them researchers. I do have their first names, but if I do theirs, I really ought to do the first name of all researchers in the article, but for a handful I do not have their first name. That is why I decided to only provide last names for all researchers in the article, with the exception of the one who discovered the effect.

Method:
 * "All 16 conditions gave a name-letter effect, with a stronger effect when QXYZ were included and the less preferred letter was crossed out—the latter mainly due to the rejection of the name letters of the other person." I think that means since there were 4 either-or factors, there are 2 to the 4th power (=16) possible combinations of the either-or results for the factors? Will that be clear to all readers that "all 16 conditions" refers to that (if indeed my understanding is correct)?
 * I see. I dropped the 16 altogether, it is not really needed to get the point across.

More comments to follow, thanks. Moisejp (talk) 07:08, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you for taking the time. Much appreciated.Edwininlondon (talk) 20:40, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Method:
 * "For example, for the fictitious pair Irma Maes and Jef Jacobs the first stimulus was A and U: the last letter in Irma's first name and a letter not in her name. Both subjects had to circle the letter they preferred. The next stimulus was M and D": Just checking, but is this all a fictitious example that Nuttin provided? It starts off being described as "fictitious" but then sounds very real with "the first stimulus was A and U... the next stimulus was M and D".
 * Yes, it's fictitious. Rewording wasn't easy as it quickly ends up with loads of conditionals. So I brought in the table. Now the verb "is" can be used.


 * "All conditions gave a name-letter effect, with a stronger effect when QXYZ were included and the less preferred letter was crossed out—the latter mainly due to the rejection of the name letters of the other person." Overall this confused me. Maybe I'm misunderstanding this, but from the words here this sounds like the subjects were consciously rejecting the name letters of the other person?? But that doesn't seem to make sense either in the context. Or if it's just that they were crossing out letters not in their own name, can you remove "the latter mainly due to the rejection of the name letters of the other person"?
 * I see this is confusing. It's too much detail, so I just dropped the "the latter mainly due .." bit. It actually matters in the 3 stimuli rather than 2 condition.

Characteristics:
 * I found it slightly jarring that most of the article up to now has been solely about Nuttin's handful of studies, then suddenly we jump to Hoorens analyzing dozens of studies, with no transition between.
 * I moved the Reception section up, to make the story chronologically correct.

Mere ownership:
 * "If that were true, then various verifiable predictions could be made and tested": I'm not sure if everybody uses it this way—and please ignore this comment if you disagree—but for me the hypothetical were implies that the opposite is true. But the statements before and after this appear to be true, so I would not use were here. Moisejp (talk) 05:49, 14 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Reworded

Application:
 * "Stieger, Voracek, and Formann recommend that the task be administered twice, that the effects are calculated separately for first-name initial and last-name initial, that the task is accompanied with the birthday-number task, and that the instructions focus on liking rather than attractiveness." The article uses the subjunctive be after "recommend that the task". Should the verbs that follow also follow this pattern ("that the effects be calculated", "that the task be accompanied")? Moisejp (talk) 05:57, 14 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Done

I believe those are all my comments, thanks. Moisejp (talk) 06:12, 14 June 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much for these insightful suggestions.Edwininlondon (talk) 21:58, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

It all looks good. Happy to support. Moisejp (talk) 01:54, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Ian Rose (talk) 11:13, 18 June 2017 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.