The Soft Tyranny of Alphabetical Order

>
> http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/01/19/the-soft-tyranny-of-alphabetical-order/
>
> JANUARY 19, 2011, 4:52 PM ET
>
> The Soft Tyranny of Alphabetical Order
>
> By Mary Pilon
>
> Blame it on your grade school gym class.
>
> The first letter of your last name may determine how quickly you  
> respond to limited buying opportunities as adults, according to  
> findings in the Journal of Consumer Research.
>
>
> Getty Images
> The alphabetical segregation begins in grade school.
> The “last name effect,” as dubbed by Kurt A. Carlson of the  
> McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University andJacqueline  
> M. Conard at the Massey Graduate School of Business at Belmont  
> University, implies that those with last names that are filed  
> earlier (A – I) in the alphabet respond slower to buying  
> opportunities than those at the end of the line (R – Z). In  
> situations where people must queue up, those with last names at the  
> end of the alphabet are going to be faster, researchers say.
>
> “The psychological driver isn’t really about acquiring things,”  
> Prof. Carlson says. “It’s insurance that they get from the pain of  
> missing out.”
>
> The rationale is that those with last names at the end of the  
> alphabet become trained as kids to compensate for being last. The  
> Adams, Browns and Donaldsons of the world don’t need to rush since  
> they’re already at the front of the queue. But the Wilsons, Youngs  
> and Zwicks are constantly and the end of the line and will rush  
> ahead, when given the chance.
>
> In one of the researchers’ four experiments, people were emailed the  
> chance to get four free tickets to attend a highly-ranked women’s  
> basketball game. In order to get the tickets, students had to reply  
> ASAP via email since the tickets were in limited supply and offered  
> on a first-come, first-served basis.
>
> The average response time was 22.7 minutes. Those who had surnames  
> that began with one of the last nine letters of the alphabet was  
> 19.38 minutes and those with a surname from the first nine letters  
> of the alphabet was 25.08 minutes.
>
> Other surveys found similar results, including that women who change  
> their last names when they get married still respond according to  
> the last name they grew up with. Those of us in with last names that  
> fall in the middle of the alphabet, J through Q, will still respond  
> according to our place in the queue, researchers say. “It’s a  
> continuous line through the alphabet,” Prof. Carlson says, of the  
> results of response times through the experiments.
>
> Like any experiment, there are exceptions. And depending on your  
> experience as a child, the effect could be more or less muted. “But  
> alphabetization persists into adulthood,” Prof. Carlson says,  
> nothing things like magazine subscriptions being delayed.
>
> The body of work on names and their behavioral implications has  
> received some criticism. Some research has put name letters in  
> relationships with locations, preference for specific products or  
> even preferences in mates. The notion is that there’s an implicit  
> egoism in preferring things with the same letters as our own names.  
> Critics argue that a lot of these rules may result from geographic,  
> ethnic or other factors.
>
> Prof. Carlson says this research is different. “People named  
> Virginia might live in Virginia because they were named after the  
> place,” he says. “With this effect, I don’t think you can make that  
> reverse causality. That doesn’t mean there can’t be some other  
> process that’s different, but this is a fairly simple intuitive  
> account that would explain the data.”
>
> People who were in the middle of the alphabet were less likely to be  
> aware of whether alphabetical order was fair or not, the researchers  
> found. A greater number of those at the end of the alphabet were  
> likely to report that being at the front of the line was a big  
> advantage.
>
> Since the surveys looked at adults today reflecting on their  
> childhood, it’s interesting to wonder how much of this is  
> generational. Are schools using last names to organize less? Is the  
> notion self-reinforcing? Is the phenomena overblown?
>
> “No study is perfect,” Prof. Carlson says. “But my co-author’s  
> maiden name is Yates and she jumped at the chance to work on this  
> paper immediately.”
>

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