Connecting People's Names and Their Behavior
by Travis Pantin
Wed, 28 Nov 2007 at 8:28 PM
updated Wed, 28 Nov 2007 at 8:31 PM
Do birth names dictate behavior? A professor of management at the University
of California, San Diego, Leif Nelson, and a management professor at Yale
University, and Joseph Simmons, believe they do.
In a paper titled "Moniker Maladies: When Names Sabotage Success," Messrs.
Nelson and Simmons claim the first initial of a name may subconsciously
change the way a person acts.
For instance, their research shows that although all baseball players want
to avoid strikeouts, those whose names begin with the strikeout-signifying
letter "K" strike out more frequently than others. Similarly, students whose
names begin with letters associated with poorer performance (like C and D)
achieve lower grade point averages than do students whose names begin with
letters like A and B.
Spooky, huh?
The professors chalk up the phenomenon to a subconscious psychological
effect. For baseball players whose names begin with K, they say, striking
out may "feel implicitly less aversive. Even Karl 'Koley' Kolseth would find
a strikeout aversive, but he might find it a little less aversive than
players who do not share his initials, and therefore he might be less
motivated to avoid striking out."
Andrew Gelman (stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/blog), a professor in the
Statistics Department and the Political Science Department at Columbia
University, is skeptical. "On one hand, it seems pretty implausible to me
that kids whose names begin with C and D are really sabotaging themselves
like this. On the other hand, hey, there are the data."
In a similar paper released in 2005, which Mr. Gelman provides a link to on
his blog, other research demonstrated a related phenomenon. Apparently,
peoplešs names also dictate two of their major life decisions: where they
choose to live and what they choose to do for a living.
The report determined that people named Dennis are much more likely to
become dentists, and fellows named Louis are more likely to reside in St.
Louis.
If youšre not inclined to buy any of this, neither is the anonymous blogger
at Bluematter. He thinks it might be explainable by "omitted variable bias."
Suppose, he says, "that names that start with C or D are way less frequent
in the population of Asian students compared to Anglo-Saxon surnames.
Further, assume that Asians are discriminated against when it comes to
college admission, perhaps due to uncertainty about the quality of the
schools they attend. That way, the average Asian in college will be a better
student than the average Anglo-Saxon, and he will also be less likely to
have a name that starts with C or D."
***
WHY OIL PRICES HAVE PEAKED James Hamilton lays out a
convincing case for why he thinks oil prices may have peaked. The reasoning?
Itšs a case of supply and demand. Saudi oil production is up and
accumulating evidence of a weakening American economy is dragging on global
oil demand.
Over the summer, Saudi oil production fell to 8.6 million barrels a day
more than 1 million barrels a day below levels seen in 2005. However, recent
data suggest Saudi production has increased to as much as 9.15 million
barrels a day. Mr. Hamilton predicted this rise in September, before it was
announced.
The International Energy Agency also recently released "promising news on a
number of other fronts as well, estimating for example that Iraqi oil
production may have reached 2.3 million [barrels per day] in October (up
from the 2 million figure we were seeing for the first half of this year)."
Overall, he says, the agency estimates that global production increased by
1.4 million barrels a day in October 2007, as compared to September.
Although predicting oil prices is tricky business, Mr. Hamilton is willing
to wager that "with supply up and demand down, it's hard to see the run-up
in crude oil prices continuing over the near future."
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