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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.

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 and Jacqueline M. Conard

at the Massey Graduate School of Business at Belmont University, implies that those with last

names that are filed earlier (AI) in the alphabet respond slower to buying opportunities than

those at the end of the line (RZ). 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 isnt really about acquiring things, Prof. Carlson says. Its 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 dont need to rush

since theyre 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 womens 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. Its a continuous line through the alphabet, Prof. Carlson says, of

the results of response times through the experiments.

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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,

noting 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 oreven preferences in mates. The notion is that theres 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 dont think you can make that

reverse causality. That doesnt mean there cant be some other process thats 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, its 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-authors maiden name is Yates and she

jumped at the chance to work on this paper immediately.