In a series of experiments, van Tilburg and his colleague, Eric R. Igou, a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of Limerick, Ireland, asked people to evaluate written passages by authors with or without middle initials. In one experiment, 85 university students read the exact same paragraph about general relativity. The only difference was that the paragraph had different author names on it—either an author without a middle initial or an author with one, two, or three middle initials.
The students thought the excerpt written by an author with middle initials was better than if it were by the author without a middle initial in the name. The researchers suspect that people believe that smarter people use their initials in professional endeavors. But the positive effects only relate to brainy pursuits.
via Mental Floss
June 13, 2014
