Middle Initials Make You Seem Smarter

Monday, May 5, 2014 - 11:02 in Psychology & Sociology

Medieval Alphabets and Initials Flickr/Cesar Ojeda Nobody really knows when middle names came about—the aristocrats, of course, had multiple names first. The choice of the name could be a woman’s maiden name turned into her middle name after marriage, or a perhaps middle name added to a family name to distinguish a person from similarly monikered relatives (I knew a James Charles James the Fourth). We often only include our first and last names when asked, but a new paper suggests that if you want to seem more intelligent, you should add a middle initial, at least when identifying yourself in writing. Psychologists Wijnand A. P. van Tilburg and Eric R. Igou (ahem) published a paper in the European Journal of Social Psychology that argued, “the display of middle initials increases positive evaluations of people's intellectual capacities and achievements.” The research investigates how middle initials in names affect...

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