名字的心理效应:来自个体层面和群体层面的证据

Psychological Impact of First Names: Individual Level and Group Level Evidence

作为典型的标识符号名字在社会认知过程中发挥着重要的识别功能,随着互联网对人际互动方式的影响更加突出,名字作为交往初期人际互动的重要信息,其发挥的作用也更加明显。回顾心理学在个体水平和群体水平上对名字的研究,可以发现名字既能影响个体的心理和行为,又能反映群体的文化心理和偏好。在个体水平上,名字通过影响名字主人的自我认同或通过影响他人对名字主人的评价来影响其心理和行为;在群体水平上,名字作为一种典型的文化产品可以探讨社会的文化变迁规律。以往研究多是基于西方文化中的人名展开,然而中国人的名字具有自身的文化特殊性,这一点值得心理学家给予更多的关注。未来心理学应开展更多本土文化背景下中国人名字的实证研究,比如利用人名的演变更迭探究中国人独立性的代际变迁或是探究男性化/女性化名字与个体求职和网上约会的关系。

First name, a typical term used for identification, plays an extremely important role in social interactions. First names are among the earliest information available to people, given how quite often these are very first data exchanged during interpersonal communication. Recently, the rapid development of Internet, which is not necessarily inclusive of “face to face” contacts, has made the first names even more increasingly prominent and important in the initial interpersonal interaction stages. We have systematically reviewed relevant studies in psychology about first names at individual level and group level. At the individual level, researchers focused on the relations between first names and other psychological variables, like the relation between first names and self-identity of those who possess the names or the relation between first names and others’ evaluations of name-possessors. Studies revealed that first names can influence individual’s psychological state as well as name-possessors’ behavior. At the group level, as cultural products, first names have been used to examine the cultural evolution and cultural identity, which was mainly done by analyzing the frequency change of first names. Previous studies mostly focused on Western culture and respective first names practices, while little focus was placed on empirically exploring the distinctiveness of Chinese names. Since Chinese culture has its own cultural particularities, including the naming practices, psychologist should look further into these. Future empirical research should focus more on indigenous first names, like exploring changes in Chinese cross-generational individuality by using the percentage of Chinese popular names, or exploring the relation between masculine/feminine names and job-hunting or online-dating.