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The EGOLOGIST

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Hello Steemit!

My name is Dr Aiden P Gregg.

I am, by profession, an academic psychologist--a scientist of the mind.

An Irishman by birth, I gained my B.A. in Psychology from Trinity College Dublin, before acquiring my Ph.D from Yale University, specializing in the subfield of personality and social psychology.

I'm currently Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Southampton, where I'm member of Centre for Research on Self and Identity.

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My academic research has two main themes:

(a) the emotional and motivational aspects of self (mostly, the function of self-esteem, and why identity matters); and

(b) indirect ways of objectively assessing what is in people's minds (mostly, people's unconscious associations, or whether they are lying).

Some of my interests unite these two themes.

For example, I have (as yet unpublished) research showing that people unknowingly prefer the sounds in their own name to the sounds in other people's names.

This seems to be because people generally like themselves, and this general self-liking then transfers itself automatically to auditory representations of themselves.

This is another version of an phenomenon called the Name Letter Effect, or implicit egotism, where people prefer the sounds in their own name to letters in other people's names.

Hence, I call the phenomenon I have demonstrated implicit ECHOtism.

Anyhow, that's one concrete example of some of the things I do at work.

A friend of mine recently suggested a clever name for the research I do: EGO-logy -- the science of the ego (or self-esteem and identity).

Hence, my adopted moniker for myself here: The EGOLOGIST

Other than that, I'm a bit of an intellectual magpie, with assorted interests in classical music (I play piano), free-market economics (I like money), and political philosophy (I favour voluntaryism).

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I've been threatening to write a blog for some time, so Steemit looks like a good excuse to try one, not only to share some of my thoughts with interested readers, but also to assist me in honing my informal writing skills.

I've lots of ideas in mind for things to write about. Some of them include:

• Different aspects self-esteem, for a book I am planning
• My own research projects, past, present, and future
• Classic, contemporary, and breaking psychologicial studies
• Understanding prominent events in terms of a psychological and research framework
• Issues to do with the nature of psychology and research
• Topic requests from members of the Steemit community

Let me know what you think!

I'm very much looking forward to starting a dialogue with other members of the Steemit community, many of whom I already know personally, or at least know about, from our cohabiting the intriguing shared space of all things anarcho-, crypto-, or alt-.

Go raibh maith agat! (thanks in Irish!)

The EGOLOGIST

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