From the perspective of implicit egotism people should gravitate toward others who resemble them because similar others activate people's positive, automatic associations about themselves. Four archival studies and 3 experiments supported this hypothesis. Studies 1-4 showed that people are disproportionately likely to marry others whose first or last names resemble their own. Studies 5-7 provided experimental support for implicit egotism. Participants were more attracted than usual to people (a) whose arbitrary experimental code numbers resembled their own birthday numbers, (b) whose surnames shared letters with their own surnames, and (c) whose jersey number had been paired, subliminally, with their own names. Discussion focuses on implications for implicit egotism, similarity, and interpersonal attraction. Jesse Jefferson lives on Johnston Avenue in Jacksonville. Jennifer Jeffries lives just a few blocks away. Clearly, Jesse and Jennifer have much in common. Given each person's presumed preference for the letter J, it would not be too surprising if these neighbors developed a close relationship. However, if Jesse and Jennifer were to start dating, it would be difficult to know exactly why they had done so. One reason might be proximity. All else being equal, people are much more likely to befriend and marry others who are close at hand (Bossard, 1932; Festinger, Schacter, & Back, 1950) . Another reason might be similarity. A large body of research suggests that when choosing among potential friends and lovers, people are disproportionately attracted to others whose attitudes, values, and physical characteristics resemble their own (Byrne, 1971; Newcomb, 1961; Vandenberg, 1972) . The important roles of similarity and proximity notwithstanding, it is the thesis of this report that there is another important but underappreciated reason why Jesse and Jennifer might be attracted to one another-namely, the positive associations they have to the letter J. At first blush, the idea that important life decisions are influenced by something as arbitrary as the letters in a person's name may seem untenable. However, recent research in implicit social cognition suggests that the positive associations people have about the letters in their own names and the numbers in their own birthdays influence a wide range of important life decisions. For example, to gain insight into the role of name letters in consumer preferences, Brendl, Chattopadhyay, Pelham, and Carvallo (2004) had participants sample two cups of tea. The first three letters in the name of one of the two teas always matched the first three letters in participants' first names (e.g., a person named Sandra might receive a tea named Sanya and a tea named Larin). Importantly, each participant was yoked to another participant whose name was also used for one of the teas (e.g., a person named Larry would receive the same two teas with the same two labels). When asked to choose a tea to take home as a gift, participants preferred the tea that contained their name letters. During a funneled debriefing, the large majority of participants reported that the names of the teas played no role in their preferences. Moreover, the name-letter preference was still reliable among those who insisted that the name of the tea played absolutely no role in their decision. Brendl et al. observed similar findings in studies of people's preferences for crackers and for popular chocolate candies. Pelham, Mirenberg, and Jones (2002) observed similar findings for much more consequential decisions. In a dozen systematic studies, they used public records (e.g., telephone directories, professional membership directories) to identify people by name, by Nuttin, 1987; Pelham et al., 2002; Pelham, Carvallo, & Jones, 2004; Staats & Staats, 1958) . Implicit egotism refers to the idea that people's positive associations about themselves spill over into their evaluations of objects associated with the self. From this perspective, people gravitate toward cities, states, careers, and teas whose labels share letters or numbers with their own names or birthdays because of the positive associations people have about themselves. In the context of close relationships, implicit egotism has the potential to provide some novel insights into the role of the self-concept in interpersonal attraction. The same principle that explains why Jesse and Jennifer were drawn to Jacksonville might also explain why they would be drawn to one another. The choice of a long-term romantic partner is arguably even more important than the life decisions studied by Pelham et al. (2002) . We thus wanted to see whether implicit egotism played a role in this extremely important decision. However, we do not believe that the current work merely represents another important demonstration of implicit egotism effects. Instead, we believe this research is important for theoretical and methodological as well as for practical reasons. First, we attempt to shed light on the underlying mechanisms involved in implicit egotism. Second, we document that implicit egotism complements and extends past research on similarity and attraction. While approaching these novel theoretical goals, we also provide some of the first experimental and quasiexperimental evidence for implicit egotism. Past work on similarity and attraction has focused almost exclusively on the role of attitudinal similarity in attraction. In contrast, implicit egotism is posited to influence attraction on the basis of nearly any form of similarity (including similarity on arbitrary or trivial dimensions). For example, existing theories of similarity and attraction would not be likely to predict that people would be attracted to others whose earlobes, finger lengths, or name letters are similar to their own (see Buss, 1985; Diamond, 1992 ; for reviews). From the perspective of implicit egotism, however, even arbitrary similarities can enhance people's attraction to others because such similarities activate people's unconscious self-associations. There are additional reasons to suspect that implicit egotism is not a mere corollary of the similarity-attraction principle. These suspicions are based on the specific reasons why similarity is thought to produce attraction. Similarity appears to lead to attraction (a) because similar others validate one's beliefs (Byrne & Clore, 1970) and (b) because similarity fosters the expectation of reciprocal liking (i.e., people expect similar others to like them; Condon & Crano, 1988) . In contrast, from the perspective of implicit egotism, the link between similarity and attraction is purely associationistic (see also Heider, 1958) . The mere perception of similarity (especially, perhaps, if it occurs outside of conscious awareness) should be sufficient to produce interpersonal attraction. Existing laboratory research suggests, albeit indirectly, that implicit egotism influences attraction independent of mechanisms such as self-validation or reciprocal liking. For example, Finch and Cialdini (1989) had participants read a biographical sketch of Rasputin, the notorious "Mad Monk of Russia." In this sketch, Rasputin was described in decidedly negative terms. Half of the participants were led to believe that Rasputin shared their birthday, whereas the other half was given no information about Rasputin's birth date. In the matching-birthday condition, participants made much more favorable judgments of Rasputin's character. It seems doubtful that participants felt that Rasputin validated their opinions-or that they expected this deceased Russian monk to reciprocate their liking. In a similar vein, Miller, Downs, and Prentice (1998) found that participants cooperated more than usual with a bogus interaction partner in a prisoner's dilemma game when they believed that they and their partner shared the same birthday. Importantly, Miller et al. found that "the feelings of closeness that arise between birthday-mates do so in the absence of any strong assumptions of general similarity" (p. 479). This suggests that implicit egotism can provide insights into the similarity-attraction relation not offered by previous research. More recently, Burger, Messian, Patel, del Prado, and Anderson (2004) found that participants who believed they shared a birthday (Study 1), a first name (Study 2), or fingerprint similarities (Study 3) with a confederate were more likely to comply with the confederate's request relative to participants who did not believe the confederate shared a coincidental similarity with them. In Burger et al.'s Study 2, participants were given the impression that the person whom they resembled was unaware of this coincidental resemblance. Thus it seems unlikely that these participants expected the confederates to reciprocate their liking. These findings notwithstanding, we thought it prudent to assess directly whether the mechanisms thought to account for the association between similarity and attraction could also account for the association between implicit egotism and attraction. Studies 5-7 were designed with this consideration in mind. But first, we hoped to establish the real-world significance of implicit egotism for interpersonal attraction. We did this in Studies 1-4. Archival Approach: Studies 1-4 We assessed the role of implicit egotism in interpersonal attraction using both an archival and an experimental approach. We began by examining archival records to determine whether people are disproportionately likely to marry other people whose names 666 JONES, PELHAM, CARVALLO, AND MIRENBERG are similar to their own. In Studies 1-4, we focused mainly, though not exclusively, on people's attraction to others who shared their first or last initials (Nuttin, 1987) . We did so for both pragmatic and theoretical reasons. First, past research has shown that name-letter preferences are stronger for people's initials as compared with the other letters in people's names. Second, our own past research on implicit egotism raises some questions about whether implicit egotism is truly implicit . That is, the strongest evidence that people are attracted to places and professions that resemble their names comes from studies in which most, if not all, of the letters in people's names resembled the things to which they were attracted. For instance, in the case of women named Virginia who moved to Virginia, it is feasible that these women self-consciously chose to live in a state that resembled their names. However, if people are disproportionately attracted to people who share only their first or last initials, the likelihood that this attraction effect is consciously mediated seems much more remote. Thus, one important contribution of this research is to provide rigorous evidence that name-letter preferences influence a major life decision under conditions in which people are unlikely to be aware of such an influence. A lack of awareness regarding psychological process is one of the signatures of implicit social cognition Staats & Staats, 1958) . Because people's first and last names have distinct psychological meanings, we also focused on matches within rather than between specific types of names in this research. That is, we assume that people's first and last names, respectively, are signs of people's personal (individual) versus collective (family) identities (Hetts, Sakuma, & Pelham, 1999) . Just as people with detached earlobes are disproportionately attracted to other people with detached earlobes rather than detached elbows (Buss, 1985; Diamond, 1992) , people with the surname Taylor should be more attracted to people with the surname Thomas than to people with the forename Thomas. Readers who find this prediction dissatisfying might be happy to learn that when it comes to people's preferences for things that do not have first and last names (cities and occupations), people's first and last names are interchangeable predictors of what they like . Are enduring romantic bonds influenced by implicit egotism? We addressed this question by asking whether people are disproportionately likely to marry others whose names resemble their own. In Studies 1-4, we used archival records to assess (a) whether people were more likely to marry others who shared their first or last initials, (b) whether people were disproportionately likely to marry or cohabitate with people who shared the first few letters of their first names, and (c) whether people were disproportionately likely to marry others who shared their full surnames. Our specific approach varied from study to study on the basis of our theoretical and methodological goals and on the nature of the data we were able to examine. Studies 1a and 1b Studies 1a and 1b focused on marriage records available at the genealogical Web site "USGenWeb" (www.rootsweb.com/ϳusgenweb/ga/ walker.htm). The records for several counties in Georgia and Florida are maintained in ways that make them easy to download and analyze. The Georgia marriages (n ϭ 11,455) occurred in Walker County, a rural county in northwest Georgia, between 1882 and 1920. The Florida marriages (n ϭ 3,079) occurred in Liberty County, a rural county in the Florida panhandle, between 1823 and 1965. Census records revealed that each of these arbitrarily sampled counties was ethnically homogeneous (e.g., in 1990, Walker County was 94.3% non-Hispanic White). The primary information in these marriage records is (a) the first and last names of grooms, (b) the first and maiden names of brides, and (c) the marriage date. Given the norms regarding marriage in the rural southeastern United States during the past 2 centuries, we assumed that grooms (a) typically took the lead in courting behavior and (b) often had to obtain permission from brides' fathers to proceed with a wedding. We thus expected that the key predictor of marriages in these samples would be surnames rather than forenames. This prediction is consistent with research on culture. Relative to other Americans, southerners are relatively collectivistic (Vandello & Cohen, 1999) . Collectivism should promote an emphasis on one's surname rather than one's forename (Hetts et al., 1999) . Furthermore, when it comes to deriving a sense of identity from group memberships, men are more collectivistic than women (Gabriel & Gardner, 1999) . Nonetheless, for purposes of comparison, we also conducted analyses of forename matching. Were people disproportionately likely to marry those whose surnames began with the same letter as their own? To test this idea, we compared (a) the proportion of couples whose surname initials matched with (b) the proportion of couples whose surname initials should have matched if people paired up randomly with regard to surname initials. The expected proportion of chance matches of this sort can be obtained by (a) computing the sample proportion of male and female surnames (forenames) that begin with each letter of the alphabet, (b) multiplying the male and female proportions for each letter of the alphabet, and (c) summing these 26 different cross-products (expected proportion of chance matches) across all of the couples in the sample. For example, 4.3% of the female maiden names and 4.4% of the male surnames in the Walker County sample began with the letter A. Thus, on the basis of chance pairings, we would expect 4.3% ϫ 4.4% (.043 ϫ .044, or 0.0019%) of the couples in the total sample to share the specific surname initial A. On the basis of these calculations, the expected proportion of chance matches for all possible surname initials (totaled across all 26 letters) was .0655 (6.55%) in the Georgia data and .0686 (6.86%) in the Florida data.  We compared the observed proportion of surname initial matches in each sample with the expected proportion of chance matches. The chance standard in the Georgia sample was 6.55%. The percentage of observed matches was 7.51%-about 15% greater than the chance value, 2 (1, N ϭ 11,455) ϭ 16.78, p Ͻ .001. The comparable expected and observed values for the Florida sample were 6.86% and 8.70%, respectively-about 25% greater than chance, 2 (1, N ϭ 3,079) ϭ 16.39, p Ͻ .001. The positive associations people have about the letters in their surnames may facilitate enduring romantic bonds. Analyses of first initials yielded no evidence of matching. In the Georgia data the rates for expected and observed matches were 4.86% and 4.92%, respectively, p Ͼ .750. In the Florida data set, the values were 5.08% and 4.55%, p Ͼ .150. In the southeastern United States at least, people appear to fall in love with those whose family names remind them of their own. 1 Expected chance values were computed in an identical fashion in Studies 1b and 3. Creative readers have generated many alternative explanations for these findings. The most plausible alternative explanation is probably ethnic matching. As a simplified example, if our samples were composed solely of Scots and Spaniards, and if Scottish and Spanish surnames differed in their initial letter frequencies, then ethnic matching could easily masquerade as implicit egotism. Given the ethnic homogeneity of these two counties, we consider this alternative explanation rather unlikely. One might also question our sampling procedure. Although these records were presumably highly exhaustive, they were limited to two arbitrarily selected counties. Thus, to address concerns about ethnic matching and sampling, we conducted an additional study in which we (a) focused exclusively on common European American surnames and (b) sampled statewide marriage records from three different southeastern states. Study 2 Study 2 focused on marriage records available at the genealogical Web site "Ancestry.com." Paid members of this genealogical service may search birth, marriage, and death records from many different regions of the United States. However, these records vary widely in the degree to which they provide information suitable for archival research. For example, none of these records can be downloaded in their entirety, and those that come with search tools typically allow users to search for only one name at a time. However, statewide marriage records for Georgia (covering 1851-1900), Tennessee (also covering 1851-1900), and Alabama (covering 1809 -1920) are exceptions to this rule, allowing users to specify the names of brides and grooms separately. Thus, for instance, one can determine the number of marriages in each state in which a groom named Smith married a bride whose maiden name was also Smith. By limiting our searches to the five most common U.S. surnames (Smith, Johnson, Williams, Jones, and Brown), we were able to minimize the possibility of ethnic matching. For each of these three states, we created a 5 ϫ 5 (Groom Surname ϫ Bride Maiden Name) grid and compared expected and observed frequencies for the crucial cells involving matching surnames (e.g., Smith marrying Smith, Jones marrying Jones) relative to the remaining 20, nonmatching cells. Because we did not sample surnames exhaustively, Study 2 is a study of random rather than fixed effects (see Gallucci, 2004; Pelham, Carvallo, DeHart, & Jones, 2003) . Thus, as a conservative approach to data analysis, we treated the individual cells in these three 5 ϫ 5 matrices as individual observations in a traditional analysis of variance (ANOVA). Although this approach is not very powerful (because it yields only a single observation for each cell in a 5 ϫ 5 matrix), it allows for a focused hypothesis test that is sensitive to the variability in the predicted effect associated with different specific names. This means, for instance, that it is unlikely to yield a significant predicted effect on the basis of highly supportive results that occur for only one or two specific names. To test the hypothesis that people would be disproportionately likely to marry those who shared their surname, we dummy coded the data from each row and column of these three 5 ϫ 5 matrices to reflect four dummy-coded variables: (a) state (AL, GA, or TN), (b & c) separate five-category groom (and bride) surname effects, and (d) a match variable that reflected whether the two surnames that corresponded to a given cell in each 5 ϫ 5 matrix happened to be the same surname. These four variables served as the independent variables in a traditional ANOVA in which the match variable reflected the surname matching effect. The state variable controlled for the fact that different numbers of records existed for the three states. The bride maiden name and groom surname variables controlled for base-rate differences in the frequencies of different surnames. Before submitting individual cell frequencies to this ANOVA, we log transformed each of the 25 frequencies from each matrix-to avoid overcontrolling for the base-rate surname frequencies (see Pelham et al., 2003) . In addition to main effects of groom surname and bride maiden name, both Fs(4, 63) Ͼ 4.00, both ps Ͻ .01, this analysis also yielded a large main effect for the match variable, F(1, 63) ϭ 55.62, p Ͻ .001, ϭ .68. Because the results were highly consistent across the three states, we collapsed across state. Table 1 thus summarizes the collective results for all three states. As suggested by the elevated frequencies in each of the diagonal cells of Table 1 , people were much more likely to marry other people whose surname happened to be the same as their own. Although it is impossible to guarantee that these results had nothing whatsoever to do with ethnicity, the fact that we limited these analyses to extremely common Caucasian surnames minimizes this possibility. Of course, a drawback of Study 2 is that these results may have reflected a conscious rather than an unconscious preference. In Study 3, we tried to avoid the possibility of conscious matching effects by focusing on matches based on a singe initial rather than a complete surname. Study 3 also addressed concerns regarding ethnic matching. In Study 3, we examined marriages in a state with a substantial Latino population. If the surname matching effect occurred in a Latino sample, it would be extremely difficult to attribute the effect to ethnic matching. 2 We analyzed birth records for 1926, the first year for which such records were available. These records included both (a) the first and last name of each child's father and (b) the first and maiden name of each child's mother. These records were extremely comprehensive, including each of the 84,117 Texas births recorded in 1926. Almost all of these records (n ϭ 83,713) included the names of both parents. To address ethnic matching, we took advantage of the fact that there is virtually no overlap between Caucasian and Latino surnames. Specifically, we consulted a genealogical web site (www.infowest.com/personal/l/lplatt/catalog.html) that identifies the world's 200 most common Latino surnames (Abreu, Garcia, Peña, Zuniga, etc.). Every father with one of these 200 surnames (n ϭ 7,114) was coded as Latino. Virtually all of these men were married to women whose maiden names appeared to be Latino. Our approach to data analysis in Study 3 was identical to that of Study 1. The expected percentage of chance surname initial matches in Study 3 was 6.27%. The observed percentage of surname initial matches was 10.37%, 2 (1, N ϭ 83,713) ϭ 2,244.30, p Ͻ .001, which is about 65% greater than the chance value. To see if this effect held for Latinos, we recomputed the expected values for chance surname matches for Latinos only. As expected, the surname initial matching effect also occurred in the Latino subsample. The expected and observed match rates were 8.26% and 13.45%, respectively, 2 (1, N ϭ 7,114) ϭ 253.10, p Ͻ .001. Thus, the matching effect for Latinos was slightly larger than the matching effect for the rest of the sample. Study 3 also yielded a small but highly significant first-initial matching effect. Whereas the chance value for first-initial matches was 5.42%, the observed value was 5.88%, or about 8.5% greater than chance, 2 (1, N ϭ 83,713) ϭ 34.54, p Ͻ .001. Our best guess is that there is a very weak tendency for people to be romantically attracted to others who share their first initials. Our results thus far suggest that implicit egotism plays an important role in the most important decision most people ever make. Although we obviously do not know how these couples would have explained their decision to marry, we think it is extremely unlikely that many of them would have cited a matching initial as a primary source of their affection. Although it might seem farfetched that a social contract as important as marriage is influenced by something as capricious as the letters in a person's name, we assume that many of people's judgments and decisions have unconscious components (Bargh & Ferguson, 2000; . Finally, it is worth noting that we obtained support for our hypotheses involving surnames despite the existence of potent taboos against marrying other people whose surnames are identical to one's own. Additional Note on Alternative Explanations for Studies 1-3 As we noted earlier, readers have suggested some extremely creative alternative explanations for these archival findings. We briefly address three of these. First, despite the fact that some of our findings appear to rule out ethnic matching, some have persisted in the argument that ethnic matching may be at the root of our findings. For instance, a reviewer of one version of this report suggested that ethnic subgroup matching might be responsible for our findings. For instance, if the base rates for different surname initials differ in different Latino groups (e.g., Cubans vs. Chicanos), ethnic matching might still be occurring in the Texas Latino data. However, we know of no strong reason to believe that the frequency of different surname initials varies widely across different Latino subgroups. We also strongly suspect that the very large majority of Latinos who lived in Texas in 1926 were Chicano. In the Texas data, at least, ethnic subgroup matching seems extremely implausible. Perhaps a more reasonable alternative explanation for our findings is proximity. That is, people are sometimes sorted into social groups (such as high school homerooms) on the basis of their surnames (Segal, 1974) . It is thus possible that people have a disproportionate amount of contact with others whose last names resemble their own. We think this explanation is implausible in our data for several reasons. First, in Study 1, the surname matching effect was highly robust even for people who married in the 1800s, when the practice of sorting people by surname in high school homerooms presumably did not exist in the rural, sparsely populated counties that we studied. Proximity is probably a more plausible alternative explanation in the case of Studies 2 and 3, which made use of statewide records. However, proximity cannot explain the first-name matching effects observed in Texas. To address this concern further, we conducted a series of supplemental analyses in Study 2 (the southeastern states study). In these studies, we assessed matching effects for people's first or middle initials (we included middle initials because the search tool for these records treated middle names or initials as if they were first names). For instance, we conducted a study in which we replaced the five common surnames with the initials A, B, C, D, and E. This analysis yielded a modest but consistent, and significant, matching effect, F(1, 63) ϭ 9.77, p ϭ .003, ϭ .37. Relative to base rates, people were 8.8% more likely to marry another person when this person's first or middle initial was the same as their own first or middle initial. Our results do not appear to be an artifact of proximity. A third alternative explanation for our findings is that reporting errors could conceivably yield erroneous surname matches in some marriage records. In regions and historical periods in which a substantial proportion of people were not skilled readers (e.g., in Alabama in the 1800s), some people might erroneously enter a bride's soon-to-be married name in place of her maiden name. Although it is difficult to assess the likelihood of this kind of error, this error seems less likely to occur in the case of modern as opposed to older marriage records. With this concern in mind, we identified a source of modern, comprehensive marriage records available from the Texas Department of Health (http://www.tdh .state.tx.us/bvs/registra/marridx/marridx.htm). The most recent marriage records available at this source identified about 165,000 marriages that took place in 2001. Using these records, we ob-2 Shortly after we downloaded these data, they were taken off-line, apparently because an adopted person had used them to identify his or her biological parents. At the time of this writing, a message on the Web page where we obtained the data indicated that it was unclear whether the data would become available again for downloading. IMPLICIT EGOTISM AND INTERPERSONAL ATTRACTION served a clear replication of the surname matching effects observed in the much older records used in Study 2. Relative to base rates, people were about 36% more likely to marry others who shared their surname, and the same random effects ANOVA that was used to analyze the data from Study 2 revealed that this surname matching effect was highly significant, F(4, 15) ϭ 11.01, p ϭ .005, ϭ .65 (as compared with ϭ .68 for the three southeastern states). Because these Texas data included the ages of brides and grooms at the time of their marriages, they also allowed us to address the issue of proximity in a more straightforward way than we were able to do in any of our other samples. The most common route through which people are placed in social groups based on their surnames is educational (e.g., by being sorted into high school homerooms on the basis of surname). The proximity perspective suggests that the surname matching effect should disappear, or at least be diminished, for couples who are far apart in age-because couples far apart in age are not likely to have been grouped together in educational settings. In the Texas data, however, the surname matching effect was slightly larger than usual among couples whose ages were more discrepant. For instance a dummy-coded surname-match variable correlated positively, albeit nonsignificantly, with the absolute value of the discrepancy between brides' and grooms' ages, r(304) ϭ .07, p ϭ .233. Taken together with our other findings, this suggests that proximity is not a good alternative explanation for implicit egotism. A fourth alternative explanation for our archival findings is that they simply reflect sampling error. Based on our sample sizes, and the range of samples we studied, this probably qualifies as the least plausible of all conceivable explanations for our findings. To address a more pointed version of this question, we have yet to identify any large data sets in which we did not observe nameletter surname matching effects in marriage. This effect is highly replicable. Having said this, it should go without saying that our evidence for a first-name matching effect in marriage is highly limited. That is, we only obtained evidence of a first-name matching effect in Studies 2 and 3, and this effect was always modest. Study 4 was designed to investigate first-name matching effects using a different analytic approach-one that might increase our power to detect an effect by examining matches based on more than one letter. Study 4 also included residents of the entire United States. Although we were unable to locate a nationwide set of marriage records, we did identify an archival data source that identified couples who appeared to be married or cohabitating. Finally, in Study 4 we hoped to gain evidence for a name-letter matching effect that (a) could not be based on alphabetical sorting by surname and (b) was not based on matching by age or ethnicity. Study 4 In Study 4, we examined joint telephone listings in a national Internet telephone directory (http://www.ancestry.com/search/rectype/directories/ ustel/main.htm). We began by identifying 12 male and female first names that strongly resembled one another. We did so by examining a ranked list of male and female first name frequencies based on 1990 census records. More specifically, we searched for common female first names that shared a minimum of their first four letters with each of the most common male first names. (We used male names as our starting point because female names are often derived from male names.) When no common (i.e., top-200 ranked) female first name matched a specific male first name (e.g., there is no match for John), we moved on to the next male name in the list. The resulting set of 12 name pairs (e.g., Eric-Erica) appears in Table 2 . After identifying the 12 name pairs, we organized them into three blocks of four pairs based on the age of the male names. This is important because (a) people typically marry others who are similar in age and (b) first name frequencies vary systematically with age. We dated the male names by examining social security death index records to tabulate population frequencies for each name for people born in 1920 and 1960. For each first name, we then created an odds ratio of the 1920 frequencies relative to the 1960 frequencies associated with that specific name. These odds ratios served as objective indicators of the age of each name. Finally, we blocked the four oldest male names together (Frank, Charles, Joseph, Carl), followed by the four "middle-aged" male names (Robert, Paul, Andrew, Stephen), followed by the four youngest male names (Patrick, Michael, Eric, and Christopher). We then paired each female first name with the specific male first name that it resembled. This procedure minimized the likelihood that people with similar first names could be disproportionately paired together based on age matching. For instance, if Joseph and Josephine both happened to be very old names, but the three male names that were grouped with Joseph were just as old as Joseph, then the disproportionate pairing of Joseph and Josephine could not easily be attributed to age matching. The results of Study 4 are summarized in Table 2 . As suggested by the frequencies in the diagonals of each 4 ϫ 4 grid, people were disproportionately likely to be married to others whose first names resembled their own. The observed number of matches exceeded the chance standard for 10 of the 12 name pairs. If treated as separate replications, two of the three studies yielded significant first-name matching effects. In focused tests that compared the total expected and observed number of matches and mismatches for each 4 ϫ 4 grid, the respective chi-square values for the older, middle-aged, and young male name sets were 2 (1, N ϭ 2,539) ϭ 11.01, p Ͻ .001; 2 (1, N ϭ 6,064) ϭ 32.43, p Ͻ .001; and 2 (1, N ϭ 11,385) ϭ 3.54, ns. On the whole, the effect size in this study was small. Averaging across the three replications, the total number of first name matches exceeded the chance value by only 7.6%. Nonetheless, given the arbitrary nature of people's names and prevailing wisdom about why people should marry, we consider this effect to be both theoretically and practically significant (Prentice & Miller, 1992) . These matching effects do not appear to be grounded in ethnic matching. For example, the first three female first names in Replication 1 (older male names) are all French, whereas none of the first three male names is French. Supplemental analyses also suggested that the size of the matching effect (expressed as an odds ratio) was directly proportional to (a) the strength of the match in the pronunciation of the male and female names (e.g., Carl-Carla yielded a larger effect than Frank-Frances) and (b) the objective frequency of the names (as we have seen elsewhere, name-letter effects are larger for people with less common-i.e., more distinctive-names). For instance, the name pair Michael-Michelle yielded a modest reversal in these data. These two names are very common and are pronounced quite differently. In contrast, the name pair Eric-Erica (two rare names that are pronounced very similarly) yielded an odds ratio that approached 2:1 . Critics may also note that Study 4 is based on an unrepresentative sample. To qualify for Study 4, that is, couples had to have joint telephone listings. If these couples resemble those who maintain joint rather than individual checking accounts, the available evidence suggests that they feel especially close to one another (Kurdek, 1993) . This is arguably a strength rather than a weakness of Study 4. A more serious criticism of Study 4 is that couples with similar first names may not be disproportionately likely to marry. Instead, once they do marry, they may be disproportionately likely to request joint telephone listings (e.g., because they like alliteration). To address this concern, we replicated this first-name matching effect in a set of state-wide Colorado marriage records (the only large set of records we could find that would allow a test of the effect). For instance, for a direct replication involving the 6 name pairs that provided the best matches in Study 4, we observed 168 matches when base rates dictated there should have been only 147 (a surplus of 14.3%). Our findings appear to be based on adoration rather than alliteration. It is also worth noting that most criticisms involving reverse causality are not applicable in the present studies. Specifically, it is not plausible that people's marriages caused the names that predicted them. A final criticism of Study 4 is that, like Study 2, Study 4 sampled a limited set of names (rather than exhaustively sampling all possible names). Thus, a more conservative approach to the analysis of Study 4 would treat individual combinations of names (e.g., individual cells in these 4 ϫ 4 matrices) as the unit of analysis (as we did in Study 2). These more conservative analyses revealed that the first-name matching effect was only significant in Study 4 for the six name pairs whose first syllables are pronounced in the same fashion ( p ϭ .001). Perhaps the fairest interpretation of Study 4 is that, like Studies 2 and 3, it yielded evidence of a very modest first-name matching effect. Experimental Approach: Studies 5-7 Taken together, the results of Studies 1-4 strongly suggest that implicit egotism might influence interpersonal attraction. Specifically, people appear to be disproportionately likely to marry or cohabitate with other people whose names are similar to their own first or last names. However, this archival approach does not afford the kind of firm causal conclusions one might wish to draw regarding the influence of implicit egotism on interpersonal attraction. For example, whereas we sampled names using a rigorous and systematic procedure, we did not sample names randomly. To solidify the argument that implicit egotism enhances attraction it seems important to test this hypothesis experimentally. Furthermore, an experimental approach also allowed us to investigate the likely associationistic, self-relevant mechanisms responsible for implicit egotism effects. Finally, we hoped to demonstrate more convincingly that Studies 1-4 do not simply represent a mere corollary of past research on similarity and attraction. Consequently, Studies 5-7 were also designed to test the hypothesis that implicit egotism influences attraction independent of mechanisms such as self-validation or reciprocal liking. Note. Expected values in crucial cells appear in parentheses. Names are the most common male first names and female first names sharing at least their first four letters with male names, based on the 1990 U.S. census. Studies 5a and 5b Studies 5a and 5b were designed as preliminary experimental tests of the role of implicit egotism in interpersonal attraction. Participants in Studies 5a and 5b always took part in the study along with 3 other participants. With one exception, the two studies were identical. Because of changes in laboratory-space assignments, participants in Study 5a were able to see one another easily during the study, whereas participants in Study 5b were seated in a way that minimized visual contact. Prior to their participation in a getting-acquainted conversation, female participants ostensibly exchanged background surveys with a partner. In fact, all surveys were prepared by the experimenter and contained the same nondescript background information. However, the partner's arbitrary experimental code number (e.g., 12-31) happened to be the same as or different from participants' month and day of birth. If implicit egotism influences interpersonal attraction, then participants who believe their partners' arbitrary code numbers resemble their own birthday numbers should rate their partners more favorably than usual. Participants in Studies 5a and 5b, respectively, were 52 and 110 undergraduate women enrolled in introductory psychology classes at the State University of New York at Buffalo (UB), who participated for course credit. Participants were run in groups of 4 and were seated, facing away from one another, at one of four desks. The study was described as an investigation of the acquaintance process. We studied women rather than men or mixed-sex groups because (a) women were more common in the UB participant pool and (b) we wished to investigate platonic rather than romantic attraction.
People disproportionately choose spouses with names similar to their own REF .
How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Js: Implicit Egotism and Interpersonal Attraction
Journal of personality and social psychology
Journal of personality and social psychology
Psychology Medicine