The letters in your name.
Do you like some letters of the alphabet more than others? And which ones?
Original study
- Nuttin, J. M. (1985). Narcissism beyond Gestalt and awareness: The name letter effect. European Journal of Social Psychology, 15(3), 353–361. Source
- Nuttin, J. M. (1987). Affective consequences of mere ownership: The name letter effect in twelve European languages. European Journal of Social Psychology, 17(4), 381–402. Source
- Kitayama, S., & Karasawa, M. (1997). Implicit self-esteem in Japan: Name letters and birthday numbers. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23(7), 736–742. Source
- Hoorens, V. (2014). What’s really in a name-letter effect? Name-letter preferences as indirect measures of self-esteem. European Review of Social Psychology, 25(1), 228–262. Source
- Pietschnig, J., Gittler, G., Stieger, S., Forster, M., Gadek, N., Gartus, A., Kocsis-Bogar, K., Kubicek, B., Lüftenegger, M., Olsen, J., Prem, R., Ruiz, N., Serfas, B. G., & Voracek, M. (2018). Indirect (implicit) and direct (explicit) self-esteem measures are virtually unrelated: A meta-analysis of the initial preference task. PLoS ONE, 13(9), e0202873. Source
- Simonsohn, U. (2011). Spurious? Name similarity effects (implicit egotism) in marriage, job, and moving decisions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(1), 1–24. Source
Our adaptation
A privacy-preserving adaptation of Nuttin's (1985) name-letter effect. All letters of the alphabet (29 in Turkish, 26 in English) are rated one at a time from 1 to 7 in shuffled order; then the first letters of the first and last name are selected. Initials and individual letter ratings never leave the device: the browser sends only aggregates. Participants who prefer not to give initials send only the mean over all letters.
Differences from the original study
- Each letter is rated once; the original studies used letter choice or repeated ratings.
- Initials are asked at the end; whether the participant thought of their name while rating is asked separately.
Measured variables
The columns of the open data file. List fields are expanded into numbered columns (for example rt_60, est_3); JSON columns contain only numbers and fixed stimulus names.
| Column | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
mean_initials | number | Mean rating of the initials (1–7). |
mean_others | number | Mean rating of the other letters. |
d | number | mean_initials − mean_others (computed on the server). |
k | integer | Number of initials (1 if first and last name share a letter or no last name was given). |
rank | number | Percentile position of the initials' mean among the participant's other letters (0–100). |
aware | integer | Thought of their name while rating (0 no, 1 yes, 2 not sure). |
mean_all | number | Mean rating over all letters. |
declined | integer | Preferred not to give initials (1); then only mean_all and aware are filled. |
Columns present in every file (14)
row_id | string | Row code. Regenerated at random in every release; it does not identify a person and cannot be matched across releases or experiments. |
experiment | string | Short name of the experiment (URL slug). |
experiment_version | integer | Version of the answer format. For experiments whose format changed, only the current format is published. |
date | YYYY-MM-DD | YYYY-Www | YYYY-MM | Day the answer was given (Istanbul time). If fewer than 5 answers share the same day, language and device, it is coarsened to the ISO week, and to the month if that is still too few. |
date_precision | day | week | month | Precision of the date column. |
lang | tr | en | (boş) | Interface language. Language recording started in the first week of October 2026; for earlier answers it is known only in experiments whose stimuli depend on the language, and empty otherwise. |
device | desktop | mobile | tablet | (boş) | Device class reported by the browser (class only; browser details are neither stored here nor published). |
source | site | embed | Where the answer came from: the balabs site or the experiment embedded on another site. The embedding site is not published. |
mode | free | daily | challenge | race | session | (boş) | Play mode in scored experiments: free play, daily round, challenge, race room, experiment session. Empty for unscored experiments and for older answers that did not store it. |
color_vision | normal | rg | by | contrast | (boş) | In color-based experiments, the color vision mode the participant chose: normal, red-green, blue-yellow or high contrast. Stimuli are generated along different axes per mode, so compare within a mode. Empty for other experiments. |
first_play | 1 | Every row is a participant’s first play of this experiment (always 1). Replays are stored only as leaderboard scores and are not part of the open data. |
seen_before | yes | no | unsure | (boş) | Participant’s own report of whether they had seen this experiment or its known answer before (in experiments that ask). |
duration_s | number | Time from the start of the experiment to submitting the answer, in seconds (measured in the browser, 0.1 s). |
play_score | number | Leaderboard score of the first play (scored experiments; defined on the method card). Empty for unscored experiments. |
Exclusion criteria
The server checks that the aggregates are consistent with whole-number ratings from 1 to 7 (the initials' mean must be a multiple of 1/k and the others' a multiple of 1/(L − k)); inconsistent submissions are rejected. Initials and individual letter ratings never reach the server and are not stored.
- Only each participant's first answer to this experiment; replays are not included.
- Simulated rows, bots, banned and sample accounts are not included.
- Answers before 3 October 2026 are not included (the first day the open data notice was live).
Scoring
This experiment has no leaderboard score. The crowd result is the mean d and the share with d > 0.
Version notes
- October 2026
The interface language (lang) started being stored with each answer; for earlier answers it is known only in experiments whose stimuli depend on the language, and empty otherwise.