Why do we like certain numbers more than others?

Answer

Dear Kathleen,

There may be several factors that can determine whether we like certain numbers more than others. It may have to do with obvious things such as shapes and colours, but certainly also with the meaning that certain numbers have for us because of fun or less pleasant experiences we had with them. Numbers that we often use (house number, number in the classroom, …) can thus acquire a positive meaning for us because we associate them with nice things (at least if you have a nice home or a nice class). Acquiring that positive or negative connotation thus happens according to the principles of classical conditioning.

But our preference for certain numbers can come about in an even more obscure way. In 1985 the Leuven professor Jozef Nuttin published a study on what he called the “name letter effect”. He discovered that people like certain letters more than others, and that the letters they like are usually letters of their own name. He started a line of research that was picked up by various researchers and investigated in all kinds of ways. For example, it was discovered that Americans often prefer letters of the state in which they live, and that, for example, more “Virginias” are born in Virginia, or more people are called “Louis” in St. Louis. Brett Pelham opened the research further to numbers and discovered that people often find the numbers from their own date of birth more beautiful than other numbers.

So people seem to have a preference for their “own” letters and numbers, and the greater a person’s self-esteem, the stronger this effect would be. The explanation is mainly sought in the fact that those letters are “our own”, and we normally have a relatively positive self-image, which gives the letters and numbers a positive “value” and we therefore find them more beautiful or nicer than others.