"How much do you like your name?" An implicit measure of global self-esteem

Abstract

We introduce a single-item implicit measure of global self-esteem. The measure is based on the mereownership effect and asks participants to indicate how much they like their name. Six studies attested to the validity of this measure. In addition to showing high test–retest reliability (r = .85), the studies found that Name-Liking was (a) unrelated to impression management, (b) positively related to the Name-Letter-Task, the Self-Esteem IAT, explicit self-esteem measures, and self-reported subjective well-being, (c) more strongly related to explicit measures of global than domain-specific self-esteem, (d) more strongly related to self-esteem judgments made spontaneously as well as under cognitive load, and (e) predicted observer-reported anxiety during an anxiety-inducing interview whereas an explicit measure of self-esteem did not