Dennis Becomes a Dentist and Moves to Denver

In the last few weeks, it seems like I keep coming across references to Brett Pelham's work on name effects in life decisions. Striking stuff! Here are some data from his 2002 article:

Ratio of lawyers to dentists among people whose names start with "Den": 7.22.
Ratio of lawyers to dentists among people whose names start with "La": 8.98.

Odds of moving from one's home state to live in Virginia, as opposed to Georgia, among people named Virginia: 2.10.
Odds among people named Georgia: 0.97.

Increased likelihood of living in the city of "St. X" if your first name is X (e.g., Paul in St. Paul, Louis in St. Louis): 44%.
Increased likelihood if your last name is X: 55%.

Pelham and his coauthors go on through dozens of analyses. They conclude that people are attracted to locales and careers in part because of the similarity to their names. Although one could quibble with each analysis -- maybe people with family ties to Georgia are more likely to name their daughters Georgia, maybe people in St. Paul are more likely to name their children Paul (and so people named Paul don't choose to live in St. Paul) -- the effect is so widespread and consistent among so many different measures that Pelham's conclusion feels hard to resist by the end.

I suppose it's no surprise that we are as irrational in our big life decisions (where to live) as in our small decisions (where to eat lunch) and as influenced by silly little things.

Or is it irrational? Maybe there's nothing inherently unreasonable in choosing one's residence based on similarity to one's name rather than (say) climate or job opportunities. Probably people have little self-knowledge about the influences of such factors on their decisions - but does that make the operation of such factors irrational? Acting on hunches and intutions, without knowing their basis, is not always irrational. Might Virginia be a little happier living in Virginia? I don't see why not. If so, and if salary (above poverty levels) doesn't have much of an effect on happiness (as per recent research), then maybe Dennis is better off earning $60K in Denver than $70K in Atlanta, and his gut steered him right.

Well, I don't know. But as a Schwitzgebel, it's natural for me to be drawn to scepticism!