Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-26-2021
Publication Title
Frontiers in Psychology
Volume
12
Pages
1-19
Publisher Name
Frontiers Media
Publisher Location
Switzerland
Abstract
We argue that rather than being a wholly random event, birthdays are sometimes selected by parents. We further argue that such effects have changed over time and are the result of important psychological processes. Long ago, U.S. American parents greatly overclaimed holidays as their children's birthdays. These effects were larger for more important holidays, and they grew smaller as births moved to hospitals and became officially documented. These effects were exaggerated for ethnic groups that deeply valued specific holidays. Parents also overclaimed well-liked calendar days and avoided disliked calendar days as their children's birthdays. However, after birthday selection effects virtually disappeared in the 1950s and 1960s, they reappeared after the emergence of labor induction and planned cesarean birth. For example, there are many fewer modern U.S. births than would be expected on Christmas Day. In addition, modern parents appear to use birth medicalization to avoid undesirable birthdays (Friday the 13th). We argue that basking in reflect glory, ethnic identity processes, and superstitions such as magical thinking all play a role in birthday selection effects. Discussion focuses on the power of social identity in day-to-day judgment and decision-making.
Recommended Citation
Pelham, Brett; DeHart, Tracy; Shimizu, Mitsuru; Hardin, Curtis D.; Han, H. Anna; and von Hippel, William. Identity Selection and the Social Construction of Birthdays. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, : 1-19, 2021. Retrieved from Loyola eCommons, Psychology: Faculty Publications and Other Works, http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.693776
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright Statement
© The Authors, 2021.
Comments
Author Posting © The Authors, 2021. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. The article was published in Frontiers in Psychology, Volume 12, October 2021, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.693776.