You Had Me at Helen: The Name Letter Effect in Judgments of Humor

<p>The present study demonstrates that implicit egotism is relevant to not only letter attractiveness ratings on the Name Letter Test (NLT), but also to judgments of humor--albeit to a lesser degree. Respondents participated as "mock" judges in a simulated cartoon caption contest and evaluated writers' caption submissions for two cartoons. It was hypothesized that participants would exhibit biases toward captions submitted by writers with whom they shared a first initial letter, and additionally, their gender. A name letter effect was found in participants' judgments of humor and on the NLT. Shared gender with a caption writer--when coupled with a shared initial--increased biases toward these writers' captions, but not significantly so. The impact of implicit self-esteem on initial-letter biases was examined, with level of implicit self-esteem weakly predicting NLT biases, but not biases demonstrated toward captions submitted by same-initial writers. While name-letter preferences are believed to tap implicit self-esteem, less than one-third of participants demonstrated high implicit self-esteem, despite the very large name letter effect observed on the NLT. This challenges the notion that people overwhelmingly possess the positive self-attitudes thought to ignite implicit egotism. Recent researchers have suggested that the NLT is best understood as a measure for which it was first designed--implicit egotism, the tendency to display automatic self-positivity biases toward targets that share our self-attributes--instead of a measure of implicit self-esteem. This possibility is discussed and explored with analyses of the relationships between the NLT, explicit self-esteem, and implicit self-esteem.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

School of Education

Year dc:date.available

2012

Author dc:creator

• Ryan, Jenna

• humor
• implicit egotism
• the name letter effect
• Social Psychology

Repository record dc:identifier

https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/389

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:ecommons.luc.edu:luc_diss-1388