Names
edyong | May 5, 2009Popularity is a fickle thing. Styles, products, social movements and people can be bathing in the spotlight one day and languishing in obscurity the next. And according to a new study, things that catch on most quickly are also abandoned most easily - the faster the rise to prominence, the steeper the fall from grace.
Many researchers have looked into the reasons behind the success of cultural tastes, but Jonah Berger and Gael Le Mens were more interested in the factors that drive them to extinction. To examine that, they looked at the changing popularities of first names in France and the…
cwilcox | March 11, 2009Would a rose by any other name smell just as sweet? Maybe, but it might cost less. It turns out a name might be more important than we'd like to think - it might affect how much you get paid. Swedish scientists have found that simply changing your name from a foreign-sounding one to one a little more local (at least in Sweden) can boost your earnings by an average 8.2%.
It's possible that employers discriminate between employees in a whole host of ways. In America, women earn something around $0.80 for ever $1.00 men earn. Studies have found that dressing a certain way or even wearing perfume…
cwilcox | January 28, 2009We all feel bad for those poor kids whose parents have some sick sense of humor - you know, like poor little Talula does the Hula from Hawaii or Adolf. But new research suggests there might be even more to it. Male teens with unpopular names are more likely to commit crime, regardless of race.
A new study in the journal Social Science Quarterly compared the first names of juvenile delinquents to other teens in the population. The names were given a Popularity-Name Index (PNI) based on how frequently that name was chosen by the population - a kid named Michael, for example, had a high PNI…