Name Letter Preferences Are Not Merely Mere Exposure: Implicit Egotism as Self-Regulation

People prefer the letters in their own names to letters that are not in their own names. Furthermore, people prefer the numbers in their own birthdays to numbers not in their own birthdays. In this article we argue that these examples of implicit egotism are best conceptualized as the product of unconscious self-regulation processes rather than a result of mere exposure. In support of this hypothesis, a study of name-letter preferences showed that people preferred their own name letters even when these letters were relatively rare. Furthermore, the name-letter and birthday-number preferences of high and low self-esteem participants diverged in response to an experimentally manipulated self-concept threat. We conclude that implicit egotism, specifically name-letter and birthday-number preferences, represent a form of unconscious self-regulation. Implications of these results for the mere exposure explanation of name-letter preferences and for theory and research in implicit egotism are discussed.