According to some psychology research (eg Pelham, Mirenberg, and Jones, people are slightly more likely to choose occupations that sound like their names: “people named Dennis or Denise are overrepresented among
dentists”. Other research (eg Simonsohn (2011)) claims this result is spurious. I haven’t read these papers and I probably don’t have enough expertise to judge them, so my prior on this hypothesis is somewhere around 50%.
But my own dentist is named Dennis.
Dennis isn’t that common of a name. Should this be a strong update in favor of the hypothesis? Or does it not matter that much?
The Pelham paper found that Dennises were only about 1% more likely than the base rate to go into dentistry, so even if the hypothesis is true, it’s improbable that my dentist would be named Dennis. So perhaps I should believe that the true effect size is even larger than what Pelham found?
[Question] How much should I update on the fact that my dentist is named Dennis?
According to some psychology research (eg Pelham, Mirenberg, and Jones, people are slightly more likely to choose occupations that sound like their names: “people named Dennis or Denise are overrepresented among dentists”. Other research (eg Simonsohn (2011)) claims this result is spurious. I haven’t read these papers and I probably don’t have enough expertise to judge them, so my prior on this hypothesis is somewhere around 50%.
But my own dentist is named Dennis.
Dennis isn’t that common of a name. Should this be a strong update in favor of the hypothesis? Or does it not matter that much?
The Pelham paper found that Dennises were only about 1% more likely than the base rate to go into dentistry, so even if the hypothesis is true, it’s improbable that my dentist would be named Dennis. So perhaps I should believe that the true effect size is even larger than what Pelham found?