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Implicit Egotism as a Function of Need for Uniqueness and Self-Acceptance
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by Mary F. Attea and Sheila Brownlow - Catawba College
Categories: Personality | Social
The tendency to choose surroundings that remind us of ourselves manifests itself in the name letter effect, which describes how we match the letters in our names to the letters in the names of items we own. We examined name letter matching as a function of two aspects of personality. College students completed the Need for Uniqueness (Snyder & Fromkin, 1977) and Self-Acceptance (Berger, 1952) scales, and provided information about their background and preferences. Women low in the need for uniqueness tended to match the letters in their first names to preference items, whereas men with high self-acceptance showed sound-based matching of first name letters with their preferences. The relationship between overt measures of personality and those that tap implicit self-beliefs is discussed.