Yes! by Noah J. Goldstein

Author:Noah J. Goldstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Free Press
Published: 2008-01-26T05:00:00+00:00

But that’s not what Pelham and his colleagues found. The nationwide search revealed that 257 dentists were named Walter, 270 were named Jerry, and 482 were named Dennis. That means that dentists are about 43 percent more likely to be named Dennis than you’d expect if name similarity had absolutely no effect on career choice. Similarly, people whose names begin with “Geo” (e.g., George, Geoffrey) are disproportionately likely to do research in the geosciences (e.g., geology). In fact, even just the first letter of a person’s name influences his or her career choice. For example, they found that hardware store owners are around 80 percent more likely to have names that start with the letter “H” than the letter “R,” but roofers are about 70 percent more likely to have names that start with the letter “R” than the letter “H.” Of course, if you were to ask, say, a thousand roofers whose names begin with “R” whether their names played any role at all in the career they chose, it’s likely that half of them would look at you as if you were crazy and the other half would look at you as if you were just stupid.*

It turns out that the tendency to be drawn to things that are associated with ourselves plays out in other important areas of life, including where we decide to live. To mention just a few of their findings, Pelham and his colleagues have shown that, at a disproportionate rate:

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