One of the most bizarre demonstrations of the like-o-meter in action comes from the work of Brett Pelham, who has discovered that one’s like-o-meter is triggered by one’s own name.Source: The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt
Whenever you see or hear a word that resembles your name, a little flash of pleasure biases you toward thinking the thing is good.
So when a man named Dennis is considering a career, he ponders the possibilities: “Lawyer, doctor, banker, dentist . . . dentist . . . something about dentist just feels right.” And, in fact, people named Dennis or Denise are slightly more likely than people with other names to become dentists. Men named Lawrence and women named Laurie are more likely to become lawyers.
Louis and Louise are more likely to move to Louisiana or St. Louis, and George and Georgina are more likely to move to Georgia.
The own-name preference even shows up in marriage records: People are slightly more likely to marry people whose names sound like their own, even if the similarity is just sharing a first initial.
When Pelham presented his findings to my academic department, I was shocked to realize that most of the married people in the room illustrated his claim: Jerry and Judy, Brian and Bethany, and the winners were me, Jon, and my wife, Jayne.
The unsettling implication of Pelham’s work is that the three biggest decisions most of us make—what to do with our lives, where to live, and whom to marry—can all be influenced (even if only slightly) by something as trivial as the sound of a name.
Moving…
All content on this blog from Tim McGhee has moved to the Tim McGhee Substack, and soon, Lord willing, will be found only on that Substack.
Thursday, December 26, 2019
Life decisions tend to sound like our names
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Blog Archive
-
▼
2019
(371)
-
▼
December
(33)
- A part of the law never neglected
- Ship lag
- Distant sounds of celebration
- A request for South Carolina
- Digital native variation
- Life decisions tend to sound like our names
- Reflections on Bethlehem
- Before you answer
- A heartless punishment upon a young person
- A travel hazard worse than drunk driving
- Winter Constellations
- Congress Updates
- RFK Days
- The many meanings of lol
- Safely onto land
- We're all in agriculture
- What the rise of satire indicates
- The Quaker City sets across the pond
- For the Arab
- Congress Updates
- Handling context collapse
- Never comparing mortality
- Inequality is an illusion
- When men cannot sleep
- The recruiting of the Innocents
- Reprove without discouraging
- Congress Updates
- Context collapse
- Building a professional practice
- The Chinese Constitution
- To begin a reform
- Vulnerability ≠ weakness
- Grow without trying
-
▼
December
(33)
No comments:
Post a Comment