OUR MANY forays into the field of nominative determinism have always focused
on surnames. James Bruning, a psychologist at Ohio University, has dedicated 20
years to the study of first names. His work suggests that when people seek
employment, the name really can determine the job.
For his latest study, published in The Journal of Social
Psychology, Bruning asked a group of students to look at a list of 660
female and 660 male names and select the most masculine and feminine from each
set. The most and least common names in those sets were then discarded to
eliminate bias, leaving, for men, such names as Howard, Boris, Hank and Bruno at
the masculine end of the scale, and Wen, Inness, Jan and Francis at the feminine
end. For women, Garret, Lee, Dagmar and Hester were considered the most
masculine, and Emma, Marta, Irma and Winifred most feminine.
Using these names, a group of psychology students was asked to rate the
probability of success of applicants seeking work in such supposedly masculine
fields as computer programming or construction work, or supposedly feminine jobs
such as hairstylist or day-care worker. The results showed that
matches鈥攆or example, men with masculine names applying for masculine jobs
鈥攑roduced the highest expectations of success. Mismatches, not
surprisingly, produced much lower estimated successes, with Howards and Hanks
given very poor ratings for manicurist jobs, for example.
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Feedback isn鈥檛 sure whether this really does tell us anything about names.
But it certainly tells us something about prejudice. So our apologies to readers
who have any of the above names, especially Feedback鈥檚 hairdresser, Boris.
A SIGN of the times: James Morley tells us that his two-and-a-half-year-old
son came in from the garden at the weekend and announced: 鈥淚鈥檝e just seen a
spider on his website.鈥�
狈础厂础鈥橲 spin doctors have done it again. After a year in which two Mars probes
were lost, you might expect the space agency鈥檚 annual performance report to be .
. . well, modest at least. But NASA鈥檚 PR people were able to declare the robotic
arm on Mars Polar Lander a 鈥渢arget achieved鈥�. It didn鈥檛 count that the
spacecraft crashed on the Martian surface in December, because, as NASA
explained, 鈥渢he manipulator system passed acceptance tests prior to launch鈥�.
Congressman James Sensenbrenner, chairman of the House of Representatives
Committee on Science, commented: 鈥淣ASA鈥檚 achievement is like Napoleon declaring
victory when his troops were assembled before the battle of Waterloo.鈥�
WE ENJOYED this message sent out by Australia鈥檚 National Analytical Reference
Laboratory about some of the courses it runs.
鈥淭he National Analytical Reference Laboratory wishes to advise those people
interested in attending the Measurement Uncertainty Courses advertised . . .
that there was an error in the course fee quoted. The course fee of $900
quoted was not inclusive of the GST [general sales tax] which comes into effect
from 1 July. For those advertised courses listed below, the course fee . . . has
not yet been finalised, but will not increase by more than 10 per cent.鈥�
THEY say that survey results depend on how the questions are framed. Anthony
James tells us that at the conclusion of a recent tour of a Middle Eastern
country, the members of his group were asked to complete a survey of how they
rated various aspects of their travels. The tick-the-box options for rating the
hotels were 鈥淥utstanding鈥�, 鈥淓xcellent鈥�, 鈥淰ery Good鈥� and 鈥淕ood鈥�.
WE ARE indebted to Kathy Seale of Alabama鈥檚 The Birmingham
News for a home remedy that could make the difference between life and
death for many readers鈥攚hat to do if a tarantula gets stuck in your
ear.
Local veterinarian Andy Sokol got a panicked phone call from a man who had
been letting a new pet tarantula crawl over him to get used to his smell (as one
does). But the spider, still an infant and not as large as tarantulas can be in
later life, walked into the man鈥檚 ear and wouldn鈥檛 budge.
The vet told the man to put his head in his freezer, which he did. As soon as
his ear got cold, the spider walked out. Feedback thinks he is lucky the spider
was too stupid to consider the obvious alternative鈥攃rawling farther in to
get warm. But now you know what to do the next time this happens to you.
DOES the US military know something the rest of us don鈥檛? Simon Butterworth
was staying with his brother-in-law, who works with the US forces in Turkey. He
reports that the American Forces Network, which broadcasts to bases all over the
world, had him extremely worried when it announced that problems with
transmissions could be expected due to 鈥淪un outages鈥�.
FINALLY Chris Lintott鈥檚 Nokia 5110 phone has a feature with extras like games
and a calculator. It is described in the manual with this helpful advice:
鈥淲arning: phone must be switched on to use this feature.鈥�