Self-esteem, self-symbolizing, and academic recognition: behavioral evidence from curricula vitae

Abstract

To provide new evidence on the empirically challenging aspect of measuring self-esteem, we collect written CV content from over 500 influential economics scholars and use such self-presentation modes as absolute and relative font sizes and typographic emphasis of author name on the CV’s front page to derive proxies for self-symbolizing behavior. Our analysis of these factors provides empirical support for the symbolic self-completion proposition that goal accomplishment reduces the need to self-symbolize. In particular, we find that receiving an education from a top 20 ranked university reduces the need to self-symbolize even when the scholars work for a non-top 20 university after earning the doctorate. On the other hand, major academic awards or honors do not seem to affect self-symbolizing behavior, which is also negatively correlated with activities having an external (e.g., policy-focused) social impact. Scholars with a higher h-index are also less inclined to self-symbolize, while being ranked in the Coupé top 1000 has no impact. Hence, despite some evidence of non-linearity, academic maturity shows a tendency (albeit not a robust one) to reduce the need to self-symbolize.