title: Spurious? Name similarity effects (implicit egotism) in marriage, job, and moving decisions.
abstract: Three articles published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology have shown that a disproportionate share of people choose spouses, places to live, and occupations with names similar to their own. These findings, interpreted as evidence of implicit egotism, are included in most modern social psychology textbooks and many university courses. The current article successfully replicates the original findings but shows that they are most likely caused by a combination of cohort, geographic, and ethnic confounds as well as reverse causality.
authors.affiliation: The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, USA. uws@wharton.upenn.edu
authors.forename: Uri
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Simonsohn
mesh_terms: D015982:Bias; D002321:Career Choice; D015984:Causality; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003674:Defense Mechanisms; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007062:Identification, Psychological; D008297:Male; D008393:Marriage; D009275:Names; D011157:Population Dynamics; D011582:Psychological Theory; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012494:Sampling Studies; D012649:Self Concept; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D014481:United States