implicit egotism

finals are just around the corner... so our saturday night has been spent with text books, note cards, highlighters, and slide shows. i have been working on a study guide for my social psychology final and found the coolest thing. (awesome class by the way- take it from dr. niwako yamawaki). in the text book is a term called implicit egotism, hence the title of this post, and it is so crazy. so let me tell you a little about while i take a quick break from my notecards...

implicit egotism: means that we like what we associate with ourselves.

stick with me here

this includes letters of our names, people, places, birthdates, and other things that we unconcsiously connect with ourselves.

now let's look at some evidence...

if a stranger's face is morphed to include features of our own, we like the new face better. we are more likely to marry someone whose first or last name resembles our own (like starting with the same letter, etc). philadelphia has 10.4 times as many people named philip than in jacksonville. women named georgia are more likely to move to georgia, same goes for women named virginia moving to virginia. st. louis has a 49% excess of men named louis, relative to the national proportion. people even prefer careers that resemble their names: there are 2.5 times as many dentists named denise as there are with equally popular names, same goes for dennis. people named george are overrepresented among geologists. even in the 2000 presidential election people with the last names beginning with b and g were disproportionately likely to contribute to the campaigns of bush and gore, respectively.

WOW!

well, i know that i have had a dentist named denise, jeremy's last name started with the same initial as my maiden name, i love the number 19 (born on the 19th), i just got a wedding invitation where the parents' names were mitch and michelle and the people getting married were clint and kinsey (so excited for you kins!), an invitation with scott and sarah getting married, and another invitation where the parents are kyle and katherine...

Can you see any implicit egotism around you??

i would love to hear them!

i could probably go on if i kept thinking.... but i better get to the rest of this chapter and see what other crazy things i can find out about people, and consequently myself.