Link Between Self-Esteem & Liking Your Name

"People who have high self-esteem tend to like their name more," says Jochen Gebauer, lead author of this study and a PhD student in the school of psychology at Cardiff University in Wales.

This new research uncovered a link between liking your name and overall self-esteem. The reason is known as the "mere-ownership effect," which essentially means that if we like ourselves, we prefer things that are ours to other options. A previous study had established this years ago, Gebauer says, when people were given toasters and other household appliances to compare. No matter what they were given, they always preferred the item that was theirs. "When you own a certain object, then you put the value you have for yourself into this object," Gebauer says.

"If you have high self-esteem, everything is good," Gebauer says. "You have no social problems, you are less aggressive, you feel better about yourself, you have more friends and people like you more." According to Gebauer, the connection to name-liking provides a better way to assess self-esteem, which is one of the most heavily studied psychological concepts. ☺ ☺ ☺

The study will be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

» Source: Canwest News Service