My Hidden Love Affair - with Me!
It’s no secret – and a good thing – that for the most part we like ourselves. Life would be arduous and pretty depressing if we did not. A healthy self-concept is a key to good times and relationships. What surprised me recently, however, was the depth to which my love affair with me might go – without me knowing it.
To anyone who loves selfies, this may be no surprise. That’s at the heart of the creation of the Selfie Museum in Los Angeles, where the photos you can take are not run of the mill but sparked by the imaginative scenes in which you can immerse yourself. Nearly every mall and tourist shop offers personalized miniature license plates, cups, key chains and shirts. You can even personalize a bottle of Coke, M&Ms and your running shoes.
But did you know that if your name is Dennis or Denise, you are statistically more likely to become a dentist? Of that if your name is Donny you are more likely to marry someone named Daisy? This is the province of what researchers call implicit egotism.
At the heart of this theory is that we like to feel good about ourselves and tend to be attracted to things or people that help us do so. Something called the endowment effect may also play a part. It says that we value things more if we own them, such as the letters of our name.
Research led by psychologist Brett Pelham and others has revealed some intriguing instances of this hidden love of ourselves:
Men are disproportionately represented in 11 traditionally male occupations whose names match their own, such as baker, carpenter, painter, miner and farmer.
People are statistically more likely to marry someone whose birthday numbers are the same.
Men with the names Cal and Tex are more likely to live in California and Texas, and a Louis is more likely to live in St. Louis. People are also, statistically, somewhat more likely to live in places that match the numbers in their birthday (e.g. Two Harbors, MN).
Owners of roofing companies are statistically more likely to have a first name starting with R, while hardware store owners will be more likely to have a first name starting with H.
In another study, subjects read a story about a Yale student (“Nathan Jackson”) from a small town who developed a liking for math. The story ended with the sentence: “Ready to celebrate his 26th birthday on March 4th, he’s now a math professor at a small southern college.” For some subjects, the birth date was altered to match their own birthday; for others, it was not. Math motivation and persistence in solving insoluble math puzzles were significantly higher for those whose birthday matched Nathan Jackson’s. While the researchers focused their analysis on the power of this social connection, implicit egotism may also contribute to the observed effect.
For me, since I have always prided myself on being self-aware and logical, I find the notion of a hidden, emotional love of myself a bit far-fetched, perhaps the work of some university professors who needed a way to get published. Of course, not ALL people named Dennis marry a Daisy. We’re talking about just enough to tip the statistical scales. But then again, my name is Terry and I married a Carol, and the first part of those names sound strikingly similar. My profession, teacher, of course starts with the letter T. And a few years ago at Carol’s urging, we moved to a place named Crozet.
Photo Credit: Selfie in a Mirror, by Carol Donsky Newell
