los investigadores que estudian esta tendencia general a valorar más aquellas entidades ligadas al propio yo (denominada «egoísmo implícito») han averiguado que los sujetos prefieren no solo a las personas, sino también los productos comerciales (galletas, chocolates, tés) cuyos nombres comparten letras con los suyos.

once a person’s self-image is altered, all sorts of subtle advantages become available to someone who wants to exploit that new image.

This parallel form of human automatic action is aptly demonstrated in an experiment by Harvard social psychologist Ellen Langer. A well-known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason. People simply like to have reasons for what they do. Langer demonstrated this unsurprising fact by asking a small favor of people waiting in line to use a library copying machine: Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I’m in a rush? The effectiveness of this request-plus-reason was nearly total: Ninety-four percent of those asked let her skip ahead of them in line. Compare this success rate to the results when she made the request only: Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine? Under those circumstances, only 60 percent of those asked complied.