Chefs eat better food, swimmers get more time in the water, chess players play on better chessboards, calligraphists write with finer fountain pens, software developers work on better laptops, conservationists spend more time with pandas, birdwatchers see more types of birds, trainspotters know more types of trains, doctors have better access to healthcare and people who work with money, make more of it.

The Proximity Heuristic: having more of something, because it’s in your “proximity”.

It doesn’t only apply to people. A country near the sea will typically have a higher consumption of fish per capita. A city near a mountain with metamorphic rock, will have houses with slate roofs. A school with more science teachers, will be better at sciences. It can be applied to most things: political parties, NGOs, rivers, industries, research papers, flowers and today’s societal norms.

The proximity heuristic can also be applied to make sense of why something is missing. Why is education attainment lower in lower-income families? Why do women have a propensity to choose some professions over others? Why do politicians tend to avoid policy changes the positive effects of which will only be observed well after the coming election?

How is this useful? At the very least, you now have a term for something you intuitively already knew. Perhaps you can take another, fresher look at who and what is around you, and try to make sense of them differently. Don’t overuse it.

This is a heuristic, not a law. Heuristics are meant to guide us in the right direction, and minimize the odds of getting it fantastically wrong. One could think of some counterexamples: Miners don’t own more diamonds, or gold, police don’t have more security and Amazon warehouse workers don’t get more deliveries. One could also say for these examples the heuristic is being misaplied. Proximity is fuzzy and multifaceted.