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Names and life choices: still more on the dentists named Dennis
After I posted again on the dentists named Dennis, commenter Donovan wrote: The base rate given for the names Dennis, Jerry & Walter doesn't pan out when you review the NPI Registry file maintained by the Centers for Medicare &...
Why it's not so weird that so many dentists are named Dennis: a story of conditional probability
Ian Ayers refers to the research by Brett Pelham, Matthew Mirenberg, and John Jones that people are likely to have names that are related to their occupations, places of birth, etc. Pelham et al. write: Taken together, the names Jerry...
Dentists named Dennis, Georgias who move to Georgia, free will has nothing to do with it, confusion about conditional probabilities
John Shonder points me to this article on the work of Brett Pelham, who's been featured here before. The news article states, In studies involving Internet telephone directories, Social Security death index records and clinical experiments, Brett Pelham, a social...
Moniker Maladies: When Names Sabotage Success
Susan sent me this paper by Leif Nelson and Joseph Simmons: In five studies, we [Nelson and Simmons] found that people like their names enough to unconsciously pursue consciously avoided outcomes that resemble their names. Baseball players avoid strikeouts, but...
My letter to the New Yorker
Dear Editors, Ian Frazier ("Snook," October 30th) writes, "you will find suprisingly often that people take up professions suggested by their last names." In an article called "Why Susie sells seashells by the seashore: implicit egotism and major life decisions,"...
Update on names and life choices
Brett Pelham (whose research on names and life choices is discussed here and here--based on the work of Pelham and his collaborators, we crudely estimate that about 1% of people in the U.S. choose a career based on their first...
The paradox of importance in statistical research
I read a couple of psychology papers recently and was impressed by their thoroughness. Each of these papers (one by Pelham, Mirenberg, and Jones, and one by Roberts) had 10 separate studies covering different aspects of their claims. The standard...
How many people choose careers based on their names?
Following up on the last entry (see below), here's make a quick estimate of the proportion of people who choose a career based on their first name: p1 * first_letter_effect + p2 * first_2_letters_effect + p3 * first_3_letters_effect Here, p1...
Dennis the Denver dentist and Laura the Louisiana lawyer
Susan referred me to an article by Brett Pelham, Matthew Mirenberg, and John Jones, called "Why Susie sells seashells by the seashore: implicit egotism and major life decisions." Here's the abstract of the paper: Because most people possess positive associations...
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