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Willer’s team argues that for two central reasons receiving is a fundamentally different experience in generalized giving and direct matching systems. The first distinction lies in the terms of the exchange. In direct matching, the exchange is an economic transaction. When members buy an item on Craigslist, they know that sellers are typically trying to maximize their own gains with little concern for buyers’ interests. In contrast, in generalized giving, givers aren’t getting anything tangible back from the recipients. When members receive an item on Freecycle, they’re accepting a gift from a giver with no strings attached. According to Willer’s team, this “suggests that the giver is motivated to act in the interest of the recipient rather than in his or her own self-interest,” which “communicates a regard for the recipient beyond the instrumental value attached to the item itself.” In comparison with an economic transaction, a gift is value-laden.

The second distinction has to do with who’s responsible for the benefits you receive. When you buy on Craigslist, if you receive an item at a good price, you can chalk it up to your savvy as a negotiator or the kindness (or naïveté) of an individual seller. You’re exchanging back and forth with another individual; you’re not getting anything from the Craigslist community. “As a result, participants in direct exchange will be less inclined to identify with the group because they will be less likely to derive the emotional experience of group membership,” Willer’s team writes. In generalized giving, on the other hand, the community is the source of the gifts you receive. An effective system of generalized giving typically involves cycles of exchange with the following structure: person A gives to person B, who gives to person C. When Freecycle members receive multiple items from different people, they attribute the benefits to the whole group, not to individual members.

Together, these two forces facilitate the development of a bond with Freecycle. Instead of buying an item from another person, people feel that they’re receiving gifts from a community. The gratitude and goodwill generated means that they begin to identify with the community, seeing themselves as Freecycle members. Once this identification happens, people are willing to give freely to anyone who shares the Freecycle identity. This extends their willingness to give across the whole Freecycle community, spurring members to offer items that they no longer need in response to requests when they can help. By giving away things they don’t want, takers can feel like they’re not losing anything of value, yet maintain the norm of giving so they can still get free stuff when they want it. For matchers, because there’s no way to pay it back, paying it forward is the next best thing—especially since they’re helping people just like themselves. This is what happened with the parents who gave away baby supplies: they restored their sense of a reciprocal, even exchange by donating items they no longer needed to fellow parents in similar situations.

People are motivated to give to others when they identify as part of a common community. But not all individuals and groups are equally likely to attract this type of identification. There’s something else about the Freecycle community that fosters identification—and it’s a factor well understood by Adam Rifkin.

When I first met Adam Rifkin, I asked him to tell me about the most interesting contacts in his network. “One of my favorite people,” he replied, “is Adam Rifkin.”

He wasn’t talking about himself. Adam Rifkin has developed a strong connection with
another man named Adam Rifkin
—a Hollywood writer, director, producer, and actor who has been a major contributor to films such as
Detroit Rock City
and
He-Man
. To avoid confusion, I’ll call him Hollywood Adam, referring to his endearing doppelgänger as Panda Adam.

In 1992, when Hollywood Adam was just getting his start, Panda Adam moved to Los Angeles to start his doctoral program at Caltech. People would accidentally call Panda Adam when they were trying to reach Hollywood Adam. Panda Adam wanted to get in touch with Hollywood Adam to clear up the confusion, so he put his phone number on the Internet. For three years, no one called. In 1996, Hollywood Adam was in New York, and a friend showed him Panda Adam’s website. “I knew nothing about the Internet, and I was impressed with what he’d created. I’d been mistaken for him a number of times, so I called him right away.”

It was morning on the East Coast, and just after dawn on the West Coast. The piercing sound of a ringing phone woke a sleeping Panda Adam.

Panda Adam (groggily): “Hello?”

Hollywood Adam: “Adam Rifkin, this is Adam Rifkin.”

Panda Adam: “I’ve been waiting my whole life for this call.”

On the surface, they didn’t have much in common. As far as they could tell, they weren’t related. Panda grew up in New York; Hollywood grew up in Chicago. Panda was a software engineer; Hollywood was in film. But when they met face-to-face, they felt an instant bond. “Hollywood Adam is a fascinating character,” says Panda Adam. “His career in Hollywood and mine in Silicon Valley have had more parallels than I would have guessed. Any time somebody asks me for a connection in Hollywood, he’s usually the person I start with. Hollywood Adam has made countless introductions to help people I know. Many people in Hollywood are narcissistic and self-centered, but Hollywood Adam is as good-natured and kind as they come. We kind of have the same philosophy.”

“Panda Adam is a great guy,” says Hollywood Adam. “We have a similar sense of humor. We help each other without keeping score. Neither one of us ever gives it any thought; we just do what’s helpful.” Panda Adam was the person who introduced Hollywood Adam to Twitter. When Hollywood Adam did a series for Showtime called
Look
, Panda Adam invited him up to northern California to do screenings at YouTube and Twitter. Why did the two Adam Rifkins identify so strongly with each other?

If you’re thinking it’s a name similarity effect, the data suggest that you’re right—at least partially. Brett Pelham, a psychologist at the University at Buffalo, noticed that we seem to prefer people, places, and things that
remind us of ourselves
. Because we associate our names so strongly with our identities, we might be attracted to major decisions that remind us of our names. In an effort to demonstrate this, Pelham and his colleagues have conducted a mind-boggling, controversial set of studies.

Across five different studies, they found that people are unusually likely to end up living in places that resemble their first names. In one study, Pelham’s team searched the forty biggest cities in the 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 examined a fingerprint evaluation sheet and remarked, “This is interesting. You both have Type E fingerprints.”

Now, would you be more likely to help?

It depends on how the similarity was framed. Half of the time, the researcher mentioned that Type E fingerprints are common: about 80 percent of the population has them. The other half of the time, the researcher mentioned that Type E fingerprints are very rare: only about 2 percent of the population has them.

When the similarity was common, 55 percent of participants helped—hardly more than the control group. But when the similarity was rare, 82 percent of participants helped. It was not just any commonality that drove people to act like givers. It was an uncommon commonality. In Pelham’s studies, name-similarity effects on where we live, what careers we choose, and whom we marry are stronger for people with rare names than common names. We gravitate toward people, places, and products with which we share an uncommon commonality. This is the bond that the two Adam Rifkins felt when they first connected. Adam Rifkin is a rare name, and the uncommon commonality may have greased the attraction process. Indeed, Pelham’s research shows that the more unique your name is, the more likely you are to identify with places that resemble your name.

To explain why uncommon commonalities are so transformative, the psychologist Marilynn Brewer developed an influential theory. On the one hand, we want to fit in: we strive for connection, cohesiveness, community, belonging, inclusion, and affiliation with others. On the other hand, we want to stand out: we search for uniqueness, differentiation, and individuality. As we navigate the social world, these two motives are often in conflict. The more strongly we affiliate with a group, the greater our risk of losing our sense of uniqueness. The more we work to distinguish ourselves from others, the greater our risk of losing our sense of belongingness.

How do we resolve this conflict? The solution is to be the same and different at the same time. Brewer calls it the principle of
optimal distinctiveness
:
we look for ways to fit in and stand out. A popular way to achieve optimal distinctiveness is to join a unique group. Being part of a group with shared interests, identities, goals, values, skills, characteristics, or experiences gives us a sense of connection and belonging. At the same time, being part of a group that is clearly distinct from other groups gives us a sense of uniqueness. Studies show that people identify more strongly with individuals and groups that share unique similarities. The more rare a group, value, interest, skill, or experience is, the more likely it is to facilitate a bond. And research indicates that people are happier in groups that provide optimal distinctiveness, giving a sense of both inclusion and uniqueness. These are the groups in which we take the most pride, and feel the most cohesive and valued.

Freecycle initially provided a sense of optimal distinctiveness through its emphasis on protecting the environment. The central goal was different from most recycling movements: instead of reprocessing old materials into new ones, members found recipients who wanted goods that couldn’t be reprocessed, keeping them out of landfills. This common purpose created a shared identity within the Freecycle community, fostering a sense of connection across diverse ideologies. The original group of Freecycle volunteers in Tucson included a liberal Democrat who was passionate about environmental sustainability, a conservative Republican who didn’t believe in waste, and a Libertarian who wanted to empower people to do things themselves, rather than relying on governmental support. Over time, as membership expanded and diversified, each Freecycle community provided an outlet for people to customize giving to their own interests. In New York, for example, a local group made a habit of shutting down a city block for Freecycle gifting events.