7 | Uploaded on December, 16,
2009 | 1 month ago 
Evidence is piling up for a cognitive bias known as the “name-letter effect”, which explains why people called Colin or Cathy are more likely to move to Carlisle, or vote for politicians named Cameron; in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, people with a K in their initials were disproportionately represented among charitable donors. And it goes beyond initials: there’s a statistically significant surfeit of Phils in Philadelphia and Georges in Georgia – an effect that applies even when you compare only the names of those born elsewhere, in order to eliminate the phenomenon of parents consciously or subconsciously naming a child after his or her birthplace. People called Dennis are – I’m serious – over-represented among dentists, while the same goes for lawyers named Larry or Lauren. What’s at work here, researchers speculate, is “implicit egotism”, the idea that our preferences and outlook are shaped, much more subtly than we realise, by our attraction to things and people that are in some way like ourselves.
Really interesting article.
