Brett W Pelham
Biographic Data
| ID | 192473 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brett W Pelham |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brett W |
| FAMILY NAME | Pelham |
| SIGNATURE | PELHAM B W |
| AFFILIATIONS | University at Buffalo, State University of New York |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3185-2196 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 894 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 40 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1987 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
Ecological and Psychosocial Uniqueness of Collectivist Practices Versus Mindsets
Objective practices and subjective mindsets of collectivism are usually treated as inseparable twins. However, collectivist practices (e.g., living in extended families) and collectivist mindsets (e.g., preferring us over them ) have distinct connections with ecological circumstances and different impacts on psychosocial functioning. This study clarifies these differences using ecological characteristics and psychosocial flourishing as criteria. …
A truly global, non-Weird examination of collectivism: The Global Collectivism Index (GCI)
This report introduces the Global Collectivism Index (GCI) – a measure covering 99.9% of the earth's population. The GCI includes six sub-scores (e.g., household living arrangements, ingroup favoritism). Collectivism is very high in Sub-Saharan Africa, very low in Western Europe, and intermediate in most other regions. Even after controlling for both national wealth and technological sophistication, national collectivism scores predict variables …
The husband-older age gap in marriage is associated with selective fitness
Wives are usually younger than their husbands. Although this has been replicated across time and culture, there is no previous evidence of the likely evolutionary underpinnings of this age gap. Study Set 1 replicated the marriage age gap-and its moderators-in 6.4 million American marriages that led to U.S. births between 2016 and 2018. This effect also replicated in three million unmarried unions. Study 2 directly examined the life history tradeo…
Not in my back yard: Egocentrism and climate change skepticism across the globe
When Tex and Tess Carpenter Build Houses in Texas: Moderators of Implicit Egotism
Implicit egotism is an unconscious preference for things resembling the self. Four studies provided unprecedented evidence for implicit egotism. Study 1 used census data to show that men disproportionately worked in 11 traditionally male occupations whose titles matched their surnames (e.g., baker, carpenter, farmer). Study 2 used statewide marriage records to show that people disproportionately married others who shared their birthday numbers. S…
The surprising potency of implicit egotism: A reply to Simonsohn
This article addresses Simonsohn's (2011) critique of field studies of implicit egotism. We argue that Simonsohn provides no compelling theoretical reason to believe that implicit egotism should be valid only in the laboratory. In addition, we argue that a careful analysis of most of Simonsohn's studies of implicit egotism shows that they provide little or no power to reveal real effects of implicit egotism. We conclude that it is more constructi…
Liking for positive words and icons moderates the association between implicit and explicit self-esteem
Including Others in the Implicit Self: Implicit Evaluation of Significant Others
We argue that people include significant others in their implicit self-concepts. That is, people's implicit evaluations of their significant others are related to their own self-evaluations. Data from five different samples supported this idea by demonstrating that people's implicit self-esteem is related to their implicit evaluations of their close others (both implicit self-esteem and implicit evaluations of significant others were assessed usi…
Fluctuations in state implicit self-esteem in response to daily negative events
When fiends become friends: The need to belong and perceptions of personal and group discrimination
The present article examines the role that the need to belong (NTB) plays in people's judgments of personal and group discrimination and in the attributions people make for potentially discriminatory evaluations. The authors hypothesized that the NTB motivates people to conclude that (a) whereas they rarely experience personal discrimination, (b) their fellow in-group members do experience discrimination. In Study 1, people high in the NTB report…
What lies beneath: Parenting style and implicit self-esteem
Name Letter Branding: Valence Transfers When Product Specific Needs Are Active
Respondents in five experiments were more likely to choose a brand when the brand name started with letters from their names than when it did not, a choice phenomenon we call “name letter branding.” We propose that during a first stage an active need to self-enhance increases the positive valence of name letters themselves and that during stage 2 positive name letter valence transfers to product-specific attributes (e.g., taste of a beverage). Ac…
Gender moderates the relation between implicit and explicit self-esteem
How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Js: Implicit Egotism and Interpersonal Attraction
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. Partici…
Assessing the Validity of Implicit Egotism: A Reply to Gallucci (2003)
B. W. Pelham, M. C. Mirenberg, and J. T. Jones (2002) argued that most people prefer stimuli that are associated with the self, a preference they called implicit egotism. In support of implicit egotism, Pelham et al presented evidence from 10 archival studies showing that people gravitate toward careers and places of residence that resemble their names or birthday numbers. M. Gallucci (2003) argued that alternate analyses of the same data provide…
The regulation of dependency in parent–child relationships
Who Wants Out When the Going Gets Good? Psychological Investment and Preference for Self-Verifying College Roommates
The results of a field investigation indicate that people who are highly invested in their self-views (confidently held or personally important) are especially inclined to display a preference for verification of their self-views. Specifically, only those participants who were certain of their self-views or perceived them as important preferred roommates who confirmed their self-views. Such preferences were some-what stronger when the self-views …
Non-conscious forms of system justification: Implicit and behavioral preferences for higher status groups
Name Letter Preferences Are Not Merely Mere Exposure: Implicit Egotism as Self-Regulation
Why Susie sells seashells by the seashore: Implicit egotism and major life decisions
Because most people possess positive associations about themselves, most people prefer things that are connected to the self (e.g., the letters in one's name). The authors refer to such preferences as implicit egotism. Ten studies assessed the role of implicit egotism in 2 major life decisions: where people choose to live and what people choose to do for a living. Studies 1-5 showed that people are disproportionately likely to live in places whos…
Social inequality and the reduction of ideological dissonance on behalf of the system: Evidence of Enhanced System Justification Among the Disadvantaged
According to system justification theory, people are motivated to preserve the belief that existing social arrangements are fair, legitimate, justifiable, and necessary. The strongest form of this hypothesis, which draws on the logic of cognitive dissonance theory, holds that people who are most disadvantaged by the status quo would have the greatest psychological need to reduce ideological dissonance and would therefore be most likely to support…
Underworked and Overpaid: Elevated Entitlement in Men's Self-Pay
Overconfidence as Dissonance Reduction
Two Roads to Positive Regard: Implicit and Explicit Self-Evaluation and Culture
Further evidence for a Jamesian model of self-worth: Reply to Marsh (1995)
A critical analysis is offered of H. W. Marsh's (1993, 1995) and B. W. Pelham's (1995) recent studies of global self-esteem. It is concluded that a strong empirical case has now been made for the validity of W. James's (1890) hypothesis about self-investment and self-esteem. The personal importance people place on their specific strengths and weaknesses is an important predictor of global self-esteem
Social inequality and the reduction of ideological dissonance on behalf of the system: Evidence of Enhanced System Justification Among the Disadvantaged
According to system justification theory, people are motivated to preserve the belief that existing social arrangements are fair, legitimate, justifiable, and necessary. The strongest form of this hypothesis, which draws on the logic of cognitive dissonance theory, holds that people who are most disadvantaged by the status quo would have the greatest psychological need to reduce ideological dissonance and would therefore be most likely to support…
On cognitive busyness: When person perceivers meet persons perceived
Person perception includes three sequential processes: categorization (what is the actor doing?), characterization (what trait does the action imply?), and correction (what situational constraints may have caused the action?). We argue that correction is less automatic (i.e., more easily disrupted) than either categorization or characterization. In Experiment 1, subjects observed a target behave anxiously in an anxiety-provoking situation. In Exp…
Non-conscious forms of system justification: Implicit and behavioral preferences for higher status groups
From self-conceptions to self-worth: On the sources and structure of global self-esteem
Three factors were identified that uniquely contribute to people's global self-esteem: (a) people's tendencies to experience positive and negative affective states, (b) people's specific self-views (i.e., their conceptions oftheir strengths and weaknesses), and (c) the way people frame their self-views. Framing factors included the relative certainty and importance ofpeople's positive versus negative self-views and the discrepancy between people'…
Two Roads to Positive Regard: Implicit and Explicit Self-Evaluation and Culture
Agreeable fancy or disagreeable truth? Reconciling self-enhancement and self-verification
The waxing and waning of the social self: Assimilation and contrast in social comparison
Past research has revealed that social comparisons often lead to contrast effects in self-evaluation ( such that people who encounter a highly talented person come to feel less talented by comparison). In this report, however, it is argued that when people possess confidently held self-views in a particular area, they are unlikely to engage in explicit social comparisons with close others. Instead, they assume that because birds of feather flock …
What lies beneath: Parenting style and implicit self-esteem
Name Letter Preferences Are Not Merely Mere Exposure: Implicit Egotism as Self-Regulation
On confidence and consequence: The certainty and importance of self-knowledge
Belief certainty and belief importance represent 2 relatively independent forms of investment in the self-concept. Three studies suggested that whereas certainty is associated with epistemic (i.e., rational or informational) factors, importance is more closely associated with emotive (i.e., emotional and motivational) factors. A 4th study explored the implications of certainty and importance for the temporal stability of people's self-views and r…
Of thoughts unspoken: Social inference and the self-regulation of behavior
How do attempts to regulate one's own behavior affect the inferences one draws about others? We suggest that perceivers draw dispositional inferences about targets (characterization) and then adjust those inferences with information about the constraints on the targets' behaviors (correction). Because correction is more effortful than characterization, perceivers who devote cognitive resources to the regulation of their own behavior should be abl…
Why Susie sells seashells by the seashore: Implicit egotism and major life decisions
Because most people possess positive associations about themselves, most people prefer things that are connected to the self (e.g., the letters in one's name). The authors refer to such preferences as implicit egotism. Ten studies assessed the role of implicit egotism in 2 major life decisions: where people choose to live and what people choose to do for a living. Studies 1-5 showed that people are disproportionately likely to live in places whos…
Underworked and Overpaid: Elevated Entitlement in Men's Self-Pay
How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Js: Implicit Egotism and Interpersonal Attraction
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. Partici…
Change through paradox: Using self-verification to alter beliefs
Past research has shown that conventional strategies of persuasion tend to be ineffective against people who are highly certain of their beliefs. To change the beliefs of such individuals, we devised a paradoxical strategy that consisted of posing superattitudinal leading questions (questions that encouraged respondents to make statements that were consistent with, but more extreme than, their own viewpoints). We expected that individuals who wer…
Gender moderates the relation between implicit and explicit self-esteem
When fiends become friends: The need to belong and perceptions of personal and group discrimination
The present article examines the role that the need to belong (NTB) plays in people's judgments of personal and group discrimination and in the attributions people make for potentially discriminatory evaluations. The authors hypothesized that the NTB motivates people to conclude that (a) whereas they rarely experience personal discrimination, (b) their fellow in-group members do experience discrimination. In Study 1, people high in the NTB report…
The idiographic nature of human personality: Examples of the idiographic self-concept
Arguments are made for the practical and theoretical merits of idiographic approaches to personality. In addition, it is argued that idiographic approaches to personality afford levels of prediction that cannot be provided by nomothetic analyses, and 2 studies of the role of self-investment in interpersonal perception are presented in support of this position. Finally, in contrast to previous arguments for idiographic approaches, it is suggested …
Name Letter Branding: Valence Transfers When Product Specific Needs Are Active
Respondents in five experiments were more likely to choose a brand when the brand name started with letters from their names than when it did not, a choice phenomenon we call “name letter branding.” We propose that during a first stage an active need to self-enhance increases the positive valence of name letters themselves and that during stage 2 positive name letter valence transfers to product-specific attributes (e.g., taste of a beverage). Ac…
The effect of motivation of judgment depends on the difficulty of the judgment
Three studies tested the hypothesis that high levels of motivation facilitate accurate judgments when judgments are relatively easy but debilitate judgments when judgments are relatively difficult. Each study focused on a different judgmental heuristic, and each made use of different motivation and task difficulty manipulations. In all 3 studies, high levels of motivation increased judgmental accuracy in the case of easy judgments and decreased j…
The regulation of dependency in parent–child relationships
Overconfidence as Dissonance Reduction
On the benefits of misery: Self-serving biases in the depressive self-concept
Two survey studies suggested that depressed people react to their acute distress by engaging in self-serving biases and striving to develop positive self-views. Study 1 revealed that whereas most of the specific self-views of depressed persons were relatively negative, their best (most favorable) self-views were just as favorable as the best self-views of nondepressed persons. Moreover, depressed participants reported that they were highly confid…
Influence and inference: What the active perceiver overlooks
Fluctuations in state implicit self-esteem in response to daily negative events
Influence and inference: What the active perceiver overlooks
Causal chunking: Memory and inference in ongoing interaction
We propose that people simplify their perceptions of their interactions by organizing them into discrete casual chunks. Once formed, these chunks presumably influence the extent to which people are aware of their influence on others, as well as their impressions of others. We anticipated that people would form self-causal chunks (e.g., my action causes my partner's action) when they possessed an offensive set and other-causal chunks when they pos…
Change through paradox: Using self-verification to alter beliefs
Past research has shown that conventional strategies of persuasion tend to be ineffective against people who are highly certain of their beliefs. To change the beliefs of such individuals, we devised a paradoxical strategy that consisted of posing superattitudinal leading questions (questions that encouraged respondents to make statements that were consistent with, but more extreme than, their own viewpoints). We expected that individuals who wer…
Of thoughts unspoken: Social inference and the self-regulation of behavior
How do attempts to regulate one's own behavior affect the inferences one draws about others? We suggest that perceivers draw dispositional inferences about targets (characterization) and then adjust those inferences with information about the constraints on the targets' behaviors (correction). Because correction is more effortful than characterization, perceivers who devote cognitive resources to the regulation of their own behavior should be abl…
On cognitive busyness: When person perceivers meet persons perceived
Person perception includes three sequential processes: categorization (what is the actor doing?), characterization (what trait does the action imply?), and correction (what situational constraints may have caused the action?). We argue that correction is less automatic (i.e., more easily disrupted) than either categorization or characterization. In Experiment 1, subjects observed a target behave anxiously in an anxiety-provoking situation. In Exp…
Agreeable fancy or disagreeable truth? Reconciling self-enhancement and self-verification
From self-conceptions to self-worth: On the sources and structure of global self-esteem
Three factors were identified that uniquely contribute to people's global self-esteem: (a) people's tendencies to experience positive and negative affective states, (b) people's specific self-views (i.e., their conceptions oftheir strengths and weaknesses), and (c) the way people frame their self-views. Framing factors included the relative certainty and importance ofpeople's positive versus negative self-views and the discrepancy between people'…
On confidence and consequence: The certainty and importance of self-knowledge
Belief certainty and belief importance represent 2 relatively independent forms of investment in the self-concept. Three studies suggested that whereas certainty is associated with epistemic (i.e., rational or informational) factors, importance is more closely associated with emotive (i.e., emotional and motivational) factors. A 4th study explored the implications of certainty and importance for the temporal stability of people's self-views and r…
On the benefits of misery: Self-serving biases in the depressive self-concept
Two survey studies suggested that depressed people react to their acute distress by engaging in self-serving biases and striving to develop positive self-views. Study 1 revealed that whereas most of the specific self-views of depressed persons were relatively negative, their best (most favorable) self-views were just as favorable as the best self-views of nondepressed persons. Moreover, depressed participants reported that they were highly confid…
Allure of negative feedback: Self-verification strivings among depressed persons
We propose that people with negative self-views are rejected because they gravitate to partners who view them unfavorably. In relation to nondepressed college students (n = 28), depressives (n = 13) preferred interaction partners who evaluated them unfavorably (Study 1). Similarly, in relation to nondepressives (n = 106), depressives (n = 10) preferred friends or dating partners who evaluated them unfavorably (Study 2). Dysphorics (n = 6) were mo…
The idiographic nature of human personality: Examples of the idiographic self-concept
Arguments are made for the practical and theoretical merits of idiographic approaches to personality. In addition, it is argued that idiographic approaches to personality afford levels of prediction that cannot be provided by nomothetic analyses, and 2 studies of the role of self-investment in interpersonal perception are presented in support of this position. Finally, in contrast to previous arguments for idiographic approaches, it is suggested …
Further evidence for a Jamesian model of self-worth: Reply to Marsh (1995)
A critical analysis is offered of H. W. Marsh's (1993, 1995) and B. W. Pelham's (1995) recent studies of global self-esteem. It is concluded that a strong empirical case has now been made for the validity of W. James's (1890) hypothesis about self-investment and self-esteem. The personal importance people place on their specific strengths and weaknesses is an important predictor of global self-esteem
Self-investment and self-esteem: Evidence for a Jamesian model of self-worth
W. James (1890) argued that the importance people attach to their self-views determines the impact of these self-views on people's global feelings of self-worth. Despite the intuitive appeal of this position, most research on the relation between people's specific self-views and their global self-esteem has failed to support this assertion. B. W. Pelham and W. B. Swann (1989) provided evidence in support for W. James's assertion, but H. W. Marsh …
The effect of motivation of judgment depends on the difficulty of the judgment: Correction
The waxing and waning of the social self: Assimilation and contrast in social comparison
Past research has revealed that social comparisons often lead to contrast effects in self-evaluation ( such that people who encounter a highly talented person come to feel less talented by comparison). In this report, however, it is argued that when people possess confidently held self-views in a particular area, they are unlikely to engage in explicit social comparisons with close others. Instead, they assume that because birds of feather flock …
The effect of motivation of judgment depends on the difficulty of the judgment
Three studies tested the hypothesis that high levels of motivation facilitate accurate judgments when judgments are relatively easy but debilitate judgments when judgments are relatively difficult. Each study focused on a different judgmental heuristic, and each made use of different motivation and task difficulty manipulations. In all 3 studies, high levels of motivation increased judgmental accuracy in the case of easy judgments and decreased j…
Two Roads to Positive Regard: Implicit and Explicit Self-Evaluation and Culture
Underworked and Overpaid: Elevated Entitlement in Men's Self-Pay
Overconfidence as Dissonance Reduction
Who Wants Out When the Going Gets Good? Psychological Investment and Preference for Self-Verifying College Roommates
The results of a field investigation indicate that people who are highly invested in their self-views (confidently held or personally important) are especially inclined to display a preference for verification of their self-views. Specifically, only those participants who were certain of their self-views or perceived them as important preferred roommates who confirmed their self-views. Such preferences were some-what stronger when the self-views …
Non-conscious forms of system justification: Implicit and behavioral preferences for higher status groups
Name Letter Preferences Are Not Merely Mere Exposure: Implicit Egotism as Self-Regulation
Why Susie sells seashells by the seashore: Implicit egotism and major life decisions
Because most people possess positive associations about themselves, most people prefer things that are connected to the self (e.g., the letters in one's name). The authors refer to such preferences as implicit egotism. Ten studies assessed the role of implicit egotism in 2 major life decisions: where people choose to live and what people choose to do for a living. Studies 1-5 showed that people are disproportionately likely to live in places whos…
Social inequality and the reduction of ideological dissonance on behalf of the system: Evidence of Enhanced System Justification Among the Disadvantaged
According to system justification theory, people are motivated to preserve the belief that existing social arrangements are fair, legitimate, justifiable, and necessary. The strongest form of this hypothesis, which draws on the logic of cognitive dissonance theory, holds that people who are most disadvantaged by the status quo would have the greatest psychological need to reduce ideological dissonance and would therefore be most likely to support…
Assessing the Validity of Implicit Egotism: A Reply to Gallucci (2003)
B. W. Pelham, M. C. Mirenberg, and J. T. Jones (2002) argued that most people prefer stimuli that are associated with the self, a preference they called implicit egotism. In support of implicit egotism, Pelham et al presented evidence from 10 archival studies showing that people gravitate toward careers and places of residence that resemble their names or birthday numbers. M. Gallucci (2003) argued that alternate analyses of the same data provide…
Psychology (36 works) · Social Psychology (35 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (28 works) · Social Psychology (26 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (18 works) · Developmental psychology (12 works) · Behavioral Health and Interventions (9 works) · Cognitive psychology (9 works) · Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior (9 works) · Implicit attitude (8 works)