United States for the one hundred most common first names that shared their first three letters with
these cities. Then, they matched up names in terms of how popular they were in different age groups.
It turns out that people named Jack are four times more likely than people named Phillip to live in
Jacksonville, even though the names are equally common. (The Phils have apparently retreated to
Philadelphia, where they outnumber the Jacks.) And it’s not that they’re named after these places;
people are more likely to move to places that resemble their own names (Georgia is twice as likely to
move to Georgia as chance would predict).
It works for careers too: in 1990, Dennis was the fortieth most common male first name in the
United States. Jerry was the thirty-ninth, and Walter was forty-first.
There were 270 dentists in the United States named Jerry.
There were 257 dentists in the United States named Walter.
How many dentists were named Dennis?
Statistically, there should have been somewhere between 257 and 270.
In reality, there were 482.
If your name was Dennis, you were almost twice as likely to become a dentist as if you had the
equally common name of Jerry or Walter. Other studies show that people with the last name Lawyer
are more likely to become lawyers than doctors, at rates 44 percent higher than chance; the opposite
is true for people named Doctor, at 38 percent greater than chance rates. The attraction also holds for
products and people that we associate with ourselves. Pelham and colleagues have found that people
prefer chocolates, crackers, and teas that include the letters of their own names—and that they’re
more attracted to potential dates who have similar initials, even though they insist that this similarity
doesn’t influence their attraction. And evidence shows that similarity can influence whom we decide
to help. Researchers Jeff Galak, Deborah Small, and Andrew Stephen studied more than 289,000
loans to more than 23,000 borrowers on Kiva, a microfinance website where people can give loans
as small as $25 to help people in the developing world escape poverty and start businesses. People
were more likely to give microloans to borrowers who shared their first initials or their
occupations.*
It appears that similarity to the self adds a bit of grease to the attraction process: people are just a
bit more enthusiastic, friendly, and open-minded when they meet someone who reminds them of
themselves. This is what happened to the two Adam Rifkins when they first met. They initially
clicked based on a superficial similarity, which opened the door for them to connect based on real
similarities—and start helping each other.
But the bond between the two Adam Rifkins goes beyond the fact that they have the same name. To
illustrate, imagine that you show up for a study along with a college student. A researcher takes your
fingerprints, under the guise of studying whether they reveal anything about your personality. You both
fill out a personality questionnaire. As you’re getting ready to leave, the student pulls out a paper
from her backpack. “For an English class that I’m taking, I need to find someone I don’t know to
critique my essay. I wonder if you could read this eight-page essay for me and give me one page of
written feedback on whether my arguments are persuasive and why? I need the written feedback by
this time tomorrow.” Would you help her?
You were just in the control group in a study led by the psychologist Jerry Burger, where 48
percent of participants helped. But other participants were led to believe that they had something in
common with the student making the request. After they filled out the questionnaire, the researcher
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