WEBVTT - Would a Rose Smell as Sweet? 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:07.240 Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to 0:00:07.400 --> 0:00:15.120 Forward Thinking. Hey there, everyone, and welcome to Forward Thinking, 0:00:15.160 --> 0:00:17.400 the podcast that looks at the future and says, I've 0:00:17.400 --> 0:00:19.239 been through the desert on a horse with no name. 0:00:19.480 --> 0:00:22.840 I'm Jonathan Strickland and Lauren Pokmon and I'm Joe McCormick. 0:00:22.880 --> 0:00:25.840 And today we're gonna talk about the future of naming 0:00:26.000 --> 0:00:28.200 and just kind of names in general, and why names 0:00:28.240 --> 0:00:31.319 are important and why we put significance on them and 0:00:31.360 --> 0:00:35.840 do we put more significance on them than we actually realize? Uh? 0:00:36.159 --> 0:00:38.800 So to start off, let's just talk about the power 0:00:38.840 --> 0:00:41.360 of names. Now. This is something that pops up again 0:00:41.360 --> 0:00:44.040 and again in folklore, right, and we are all familiar 0:00:44.080 --> 0:00:47.839 with various fairy tales, like of course rumble Stiltskin being 0:00:47.880 --> 0:00:51.400 a big one, about how having someone's name gives you 0:00:51.520 --> 0:00:54.960 some form of influence or power over them, that names 0:00:54.960 --> 0:00:59.000 themselves are intrinsically powerful. This is an idea that goes 0:00:59.040 --> 0:01:02.760 back to prehistoric times. Really, oh sure? And uh and 0:01:02.920 --> 0:01:05.240 you know, in Jewish tradition, the idea that saying the 0:01:05.319 --> 0:01:07.240 name of God is it is a blasphemy because it 0:01:07.319 --> 0:01:11.160 holds so much power that it's dangerous, right if you 0:01:11.200 --> 0:01:15.160 go even into more modern UH concepts. So we've got 0:01:15.200 --> 0:01:19.440 like a love Craft's idea of hast the unspeakable one 0:01:19.480 --> 0:01:24.840 I've obviously just invited because I've actually said his name. 0:01:24.959 --> 0:01:27.240 Or if you go even more modern with J. K. 0:01:27.440 --> 0:01:31.160 Rowling and UH and Harry Potter, you have you shall 0:01:31.200 --> 0:01:33.320 not be named with us. To speak his name would 0:01:33.360 --> 0:01:36.880 be to invoke his power or beetlejuice. Yeah, the modern 0:01:36.920 --> 0:01:40.040 repels still skin right. You say his name three times 0:01:40.080 --> 0:01:42.240 to summon him, and then you can only put him 0:01:42.240 --> 0:01:44.520 back down by getting his name out three times again. 0:01:45.160 --> 0:01:49.280 Also the Dresden Files Jim Butcher books based highly on 0:01:49.440 --> 0:01:52.160 that kind of fame mythology exactly. But you know, if 0:01:52.400 --> 0:01:54.200 if you know the true name, then you can get 0:01:54.240 --> 0:01:55.920 power over them. But in that case, you not only 0:01:55.920 --> 0:01:58.200 have to know what the true name is, you have 0:01:58.240 --> 0:02:01.040 to be able to say it the right way. And 0:02:01.360 --> 0:02:04.840 someone's true name in that universe changes over time based 0:02:04.920 --> 0:02:08.000 upon the person's self perception. You know, how they feel 0:02:08.000 --> 0:02:11.800 about themselves. People have always perceived the power of naming 0:02:11.919 --> 0:02:15.240 is something that's really important in having mastery over something 0:02:15.280 --> 0:02:18.200 like even if if you look in the Hebrew Bible, 0:02:18.240 --> 0:02:20.600 in the Book of Genesis Genesis to nineteen, it says, 0:02:20.960 --> 0:02:23.280 out of the ground, the Lord God formed every beast 0:02:23.280 --> 0:02:24.960 of the field and every bird of the sky, and 0:02:25.000 --> 0:02:26.720 brought them to the man to see what we he 0:02:26.760 --> 0:02:30.080 would call them. And whatever the man called the living creature, 0:02:30.560 --> 0:02:32.680 that was its name. And this is sort of like 0:02:32.880 --> 0:02:36.600 this symbolic like giving dominion to the earth, you know. 0:02:37.280 --> 0:02:40.080 So the interesting question to me is, I mean, clearly, 0:02:40.080 --> 0:02:43.400 in folklore we have ascribed a certain amount of power 0:02:43.520 --> 0:02:46.360 to this concept of names and what names are, and 0:02:46.400 --> 0:02:52.120 how that can can influence both the person named and 0:02:52.160 --> 0:02:56.960 the person who is naming that person, lots of persons 0:02:57.000 --> 0:03:00.320 in my world. But let's let's talk about in a 0:03:00.400 --> 0:03:03.760 in a less sort of folklore approach, or or even 0:03:03.800 --> 0:03:09.520 a philosophical approach. Can there be real social effects to names? So, 0:03:09.600 --> 0:03:12.760 you mean, just like a scientifically measurable effect, right, a 0:03:12.840 --> 0:03:16.200 quantifiable effect perhaps, or at least you know, is there 0:03:16.240 --> 0:03:21.120 any uh indication that names have some sort of actual 0:03:21.360 --> 0:03:25.480 power beyond just what we hear in these stories? Well? Yes, 0:03:26.919 --> 0:03:30.720 I mean short answer, yes, podcast is over, Go home, everybody. Well, 0:03:30.800 --> 0:03:32.280 I mean, I guess we could start with the most 0:03:32.320 --> 0:03:36.280 obvious thing, which is that names, obviously will often tell 0:03:36.360 --> 0:03:39.440 us something about who a person is, like the culture 0:03:39.480 --> 0:03:42.440 they come from, or what their parents were like both 0:03:42.640 --> 0:03:45.440 um connote and denote certain things about a person, you know, 0:03:45.520 --> 0:03:48.520 perhaps um, where their family is from from right or um, 0:03:48.720 --> 0:03:51.680 or what kind of socioeconomic status they come from, or 0:03:51.920 --> 0:03:56.760 what gender they are or what what race they come from, 0:03:57.080 --> 0:04:01.400 or even if their parents leaned conservative versus liberal, depending 0:04:01.440 --> 0:04:05.040 upon some studies. Uh yeah, there's and there's some some 0:04:05.400 --> 0:04:08.240 kind of scary research about this sort of thing. There 0:04:08.360 --> 0:04:11.640 was a study that Freakonomics did a really good podcast 0:04:11.680 --> 0:04:13.440 episode on and we'll see if we can link that 0:04:13.480 --> 0:04:16.240 on social and send you over to to our enemies, 0:04:16.279 --> 0:04:20.279 not that they're we love the freakonomics guys. Um that 0:04:20.279 --> 0:04:23.480 that found that. Okay, So so there are there are 0:04:23.480 --> 0:04:27.599 traditionally in America, traditionally white names and traditionally black names, 0:04:27.680 --> 0:04:32.160 and back before the Equal Rights movement, it was it 0:04:32.200 --> 0:04:35.120 was kind of a mishmash of of everything that what 0:04:35.200 --> 0:04:37.760 your name was was not so much of a racial signifier. 0:04:37.800 --> 0:04:42.640 But through the nineteen seventies that began changing, mostly due 0:04:42.680 --> 0:04:45.799 to the Black Power movement and the way that that blacks, 0:04:45.880 --> 0:04:49.960 especially in racially racially isolated neighborhoods, were thinking about themselves 0:04:50.040 --> 0:04:53.880 and and so you know, it's it's it's a really 0:04:53.880 --> 0:04:58.760 hot button issue, but it's it's fascinating in a way 0:04:58.800 --> 0:05:01.240 because so so all of these studies have been done 0:05:01.320 --> 0:05:04.279 through the eighties and as recently as two thousand four 0:05:04.320 --> 0:05:07.240 that found that if identical resumes marked with black names 0:05:07.320 --> 0:05:10.760 or white names were sent to employers, the white names 0:05:10.800 --> 0:05:15.680 got more interview opportunities um. And in that one from 0:05:15.680 --> 0:05:17.600 two thousand four, white sounding names had to send ten 0:05:17.640 --> 0:05:20.839 resumes to get a call back, black sounding names fifteen resumes, 0:05:20.880 --> 0:05:24.320 and that number went down for white names on better resumes, 0:05:24.360 --> 0:05:27.960 like more developed resumes, but it didn't change that much 0:05:28.440 --> 0:05:30.919 for the black names with better resumes. Right, so, on 0:05:30.960 --> 0:05:34.240 the surface, that seems to suggest there's at least some 0:05:34.360 --> 0:05:38.400 level of institutionalized discrimination going on. Also that that gap 0:05:38.560 --> 0:05:42.760 didn't decrease for black names who gave addresses in better, 0:05:42.880 --> 0:05:47.800 more more affluent, or more um educated or wider neighborhoods, 0:05:47.839 --> 0:05:51.240 And it didn't even change in companies that used affirmative 0:05:51.279 --> 0:05:53.920 action UM. The only the only place that the gap 0:05:54.000 --> 0:05:57.520 did lesson was in certain Chicago neighborhoods that had higher 0:05:57.560 --> 0:06:01.840 black populations. Another thing I found interesting in that Freakonomics 0:06:01.920 --> 0:06:04.840 podcast that kind of relates to this, actually directly relates 0:06:04.839 --> 0:06:08.560 to this, was the the discovery that when a a 0:06:09.880 --> 0:06:13.559 a black scholar, was typing her name into Google, a 0:06:13.560 --> 0:06:16.359 an ad that popped up that was all about getting 0:06:16.360 --> 0:06:20.000 background information upon uh, the person whose name you type 0:06:20.040 --> 0:06:21.800 in pato and said do you want to see this 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:24.320 person's arrest record? And she said, you know, it was 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:28.040 a shocking revelation because she's never been arrested, and it 0:06:28.080 --> 0:06:30.560 was one of those experiences like, you know, you immediately 0:06:30.560 --> 0:06:33.280 get anxiety, You think, well, what how can this this 0:06:33.400 --> 0:06:36.720 incorrect information about me be out there on the internet. 0:06:37.000 --> 0:06:39.000 When it turns, it turns out it was a eight 0:06:39.040 --> 0:06:42.920 and add just for getting info about whomever you put 0:06:42.960 --> 0:06:44.760 in there. And it turns and if you were to 0:06:44.800 --> 0:06:47.080 put in other names, they discovered she discovered with a 0:06:47.080 --> 0:06:49.200 colleague of hers, when they would put in other names 0:06:49.240 --> 0:06:52.240 that were not uh, it didn't seem to come from 0:06:52.279 --> 0:06:55.960 a black culture, it would give you the same ad 0:06:56.000 --> 0:06:58.599 but different wording. So instead of saying a rest record, 0:06:58.600 --> 0:07:00.080 to be like, do you want to see so and 0:07:00.160 --> 0:07:03.839 so's background right, Uh yeah, she she works at Harvard 0:07:03.920 --> 0:07:06.000 and UM and they found that that arrest kind of 0:07:06.080 --> 0:07:09.800 language would come up of the time in UM strongly 0:07:09.880 --> 0:07:12.960 black suggestive names and only zero to six the time 0:07:12.960 --> 0:07:17.160 and white suggestive names. Yes. So the question there is 0:07:17.320 --> 0:07:22.440 where is this apparently discriminatory uh spin coming from? Like 0:07:22.480 --> 0:07:25.960 how is that coming into play? And according to Google, 0:07:26.320 --> 0:07:28.880 it was not their part. They said they had no 0:07:28.880 --> 0:07:32.640 no role in choosing what keywords would pull up one 0:07:32.760 --> 0:07:35.600 version of the ad versus another, and even according to 0:07:35.720 --> 0:07:38.720 the advertiser, they said that they had put nothing in place. 0:07:39.120 --> 0:07:41.920 But it may be that's just the behavior of users 0:07:41.960 --> 0:07:45.480 who click on one type of ad more frequently than 0:07:45.520 --> 0:07:49.080 the other, and as a result, the algorithms that figure 0:07:49.080 --> 0:07:52.240 out what is the most likely version of the ad 0:07:52.280 --> 0:07:55.400 to get clicks. Remember the the algorithm is just designed 0:07:55.400 --> 0:07:58.360 to try and get people to click on the ad. Uh. 0:07:58.920 --> 0:08:02.560 May have been that through behaviors of people who are 0:08:02.600 --> 0:08:06.760 actually using the service, that's why it's showing one version 0:08:06.800 --> 0:08:09.640 more than another, which means that it may not be 0:08:09.880 --> 0:08:13.040 a discriminatory thing on part of Google, which is the 0:08:13.080 --> 0:08:16.600 platform or the advertising agency which is providing the ad. 0:08:16.880 --> 0:08:20.600 But the actual users, So no matter who is at fault, 0:08:20.640 --> 0:08:24.640 it's a disturbing trend. Right. The positive thing that came 0:08:24.640 --> 0:08:27.880 out of and and the study that freakonomics was talking 0:08:27.880 --> 0:08:31.400 about specifically was a working study published in two thousand 0:08:31.520 --> 0:08:35.400 three by the National Bureau of Economic Research UM. It 0:08:35.440 --> 0:08:39.280 found that having a distinctly black name did not have 0:08:39.440 --> 0:08:44.560 a negative impact on life outcomes. Um, which is you know, 0:08:44.600 --> 0:08:47.680 the a portion of this very sad and scary kind 0:08:47.679 --> 0:08:52.120 of topic. Yeah, the findings seemed to be that UM. 0:08:52.280 --> 0:08:57.400 Strangely enough, there are short term acute, measurable effects, but 0:08:57.600 --> 0:09:00.000 the long term effects don't show up for some reason. 0:09:00.080 --> 0:09:03.080 It doesn't seem to determine a person's destiny in the 0:09:03.160 --> 0:09:06.840 long haul, right right. Their idea was that once a 0:09:06.880 --> 0:09:11.679 person is known to you, you the what what your 0:09:11.760 --> 0:09:14.280 name is become significantly less important because you're going to 0:09:14.280 --> 0:09:16.800 start judging them based on, you know, what you see 0:09:16.920 --> 0:09:18.800 right in front of you and how they act, rather 0:09:18.880 --> 0:09:20.760 than what their name is. So this might make a 0:09:20.760 --> 0:09:24.439 big difference, say in getting callbacks initially on just a 0:09:24.520 --> 0:09:27.440 resume and nothing else, but once you have an interview 0:09:27.520 --> 0:09:29.320 or something, it might not make much of a difference 0:09:29.360 --> 0:09:32.480 at all. Well, and beyond that, the they go so 0:09:32.559 --> 0:09:35.120 far in the Freakonomics podcast to actually mention that, you know, 0:09:35.720 --> 0:09:39.120 let's be realistic, how many jobs are filled simply through 0:09:39.160 --> 0:09:44.600 the resume process as opposed to networking. Networking is is huge. 0:09:44.720 --> 0:09:47.240 I mean, it's one of those things where networking might 0:09:47.400 --> 0:09:49.920 even things out. And they even said that the name 0:09:50.000 --> 0:09:52.760 may not be so important if you're if you are applying. 0:09:53.160 --> 0:09:55.760 Let's say you're a black person applying to a job 0:09:55.840 --> 0:09:59.240 where the hiring manager does have some sort of of 0:09:59.720 --> 0:10:03.440 race ist attitudes, and if they had received a resume 0:10:03.559 --> 0:10:06.160 with a black name that something a name that comes 0:10:06.200 --> 0:10:08.400 across as from a black culture, they would have just 0:10:08.440 --> 0:10:10.440 put it aside. But let's say you're a black person 0:10:10.440 --> 0:10:13.160 who has a name that is not now indicative of 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:15.719 black culture and maybe a name that many people might 0:10:15.720 --> 0:10:19.040 associate with white culture. You get called into an interview. 0:10:19.160 --> 0:10:23.680 You wouldn't get that job any so it turns you away, 0:10:24.000 --> 0:10:27.359 which you know, still shows that there's a an incredibly 0:10:27.440 --> 0:10:30.840 unfair bias there. But the point being that the name 0:10:30.920 --> 0:10:35.840 itself in that case is not is not the problem. 0:10:35.840 --> 0:10:37.679 The problem is the fact that the hiring manager was 0:10:37.720 --> 0:10:41.280 a racist. Yeah, I'm wondering these days if the greater 0:10:41.840 --> 0:10:46.320 influence of computer algorithms on choosing resumes to filter through 0:10:46.520 --> 0:10:48.960 in the first place might start erasing a little bit 0:10:48.960 --> 0:10:51.280 of that, one would hope. One would hope that it 0:10:51.320 --> 0:10:56.319 would be right well, as as it's looking for for 0:10:56.640 --> 0:11:00.120 really quantifiable things that are relevant to the job, you 0:11:00.120 --> 0:11:03.880 would hope that that would start to disappear, right, Okay, Well, 0:11:03.920 --> 0:11:08.280 so that's an uh an interesting and uh disturbing in 0:11:08.320 --> 0:11:11.080 the short term, but it seems better in the long term. 0:11:11.640 --> 0:11:14.680 A trend we can identify. But that's you can kind 0:11:14.679 --> 0:11:17.240 of see the root cause of that very easily. Well, 0:11:17.280 --> 0:11:19.840 it's just racial prejudice. You know, there are people who 0:11:20.320 --> 0:11:24.760 harbor really antisocial attitudes and that's being manifest in in 0:11:24.840 --> 0:11:27.960 certain hiring practices and stuff like that. But what about 0:11:28.200 --> 0:11:32.160 more subtle ways that names might affect the judgments we 0:11:32.240 --> 0:11:34.800 make about people. Yeah, you would think, all right, so 0:11:35.000 --> 0:11:38.120 we have lots of different cultures represent here on Earth 0:11:38.280 --> 0:11:41.839 among humankind, lots of different languages, lots of different ideals 0:11:41.840 --> 0:11:45.000 and ideologies. You would think that there there really aren't 0:11:45.000 --> 0:11:48.360 any like universal trends, are there? Well, I mean, let's 0:11:48.440 --> 0:11:53.120 just look within names that are associated with one culture. Okay, uh, 0:11:53.280 --> 0:11:56.120 let's assume that there's no prejudice at play or anything 0:11:56.160 --> 0:11:59.600 like that. I mean, does it make a difference whether 0:11:59.640 --> 0:12:03.960 your name name is Steve or Harry. It depends on 0:12:04.000 --> 0:12:05.800 if someone's calling you or not. I guess it, would 0:12:05.920 --> 0:12:08.160 you know, make a difference. Then if your name is Stephen, 0:12:08.160 --> 0:12:09.960 they just keep calling you Harry, then you're never gonna 0:12:10.000 --> 0:12:12.120 do what they want you to do. I've got something 0:12:12.160 --> 0:12:16.199 interesting to pose it here or not positive, I didn't 0:12:16.240 --> 0:12:19.560 come up with this idea to present. Okay, I want 0:12:19.600 --> 0:12:24.280 you all to um, imagine two shapes. Okay, you need 0:12:24.280 --> 0:12:25.839 two shapes or do you have something? I'm going to 0:12:25.920 --> 0:12:30.280 describe them. The shape number one, it's a jagged star 0:12:30.920 --> 0:12:34.840 kind of shape, all right. Now imagine shape number two 0:12:35.120 --> 0:12:41.920 is a rounded, puffy cloud kind of shaped, alright. One 0:12:41.960 --> 0:12:45.600 of Now, these shapes have names in the language of 0:12:45.640 --> 0:12:51.360 an alien species, and those names are boo bah and 0:12:51.480 --> 0:12:56.040 ki ki. Alright, which shape is which? Just intuitively, I 0:12:56.040 --> 0:12:57.520 already know the answer to this, So I'm not going 0:12:57.559 --> 0:13:00.240 to la. Yeah, I've I've read the psychological study, so 0:13:00.400 --> 0:13:02.640 I I so I'm biased, But but I mean, but 0:13:02.679 --> 0:13:05.520 I genuinely would say that Kiki has to be the 0:13:05.559 --> 0:13:08.800 star shape and Bubba has to be the puffy shape. 0:13:08.880 --> 0:13:12.160 Of course, it just seems obvious. I mean it's at 0:13:12.240 --> 0:13:17.040 least the population. It seems obviously some of the general population. 0:13:17.080 --> 0:13:20.880 I think the numbers changed based on a few different demographics. Yeah, okay. 0:13:20.920 --> 0:13:25.880 So this experiment was first done by a German psychologist 0:13:25.960 --> 0:13:29.319 named Wolfgang Kohler in nineteen twenty nine and published in 0:13:29.320 --> 0:13:36.280 his book Gestalt Psychology Salt, Yeah, and what he found. 0:13:36.679 --> 0:13:39.600 He used slightly different words but found basically the same things. 0:13:39.679 --> 0:13:45.280 Instead of Kiki saying takete, instead of Bubba saying baluba. Um, 0:13:46.240 --> 0:13:48.480 but that's STATICO kind of kind of constant thing going 0:13:48.480 --> 0:13:51.400 on for the sharp one and the round kind of 0:13:51.520 --> 0:13:54.840 words for sure. Um. And so found that there are 0:13:54.880 --> 0:13:58.440 these really strong associations between the sounds and the shapes. 0:13:58.679 --> 0:14:02.880 Totally nonsense word, totally abstract shapes. Why should this be 0:14:03.440 --> 0:14:08.840 um vs. Ramaschandre and Edward Hubbard repeated a similar basically 0:14:08.880 --> 0:14:11.680 did the same experiment again, I think it was in 0:14:11.720 --> 0:14:14.800 two thousand one, and they they used kiki and buba 0:14:15.400 --> 0:14:19.120 and that they found that among two groups of subjects 0:14:19.160 --> 0:14:22.320 interestingly enough, from different language groups. So one was a 0:14:22.320 --> 0:14:25.160 group of English speaking college students and one was a 0:14:25.160 --> 0:14:29.280 group of Tamil speakers from India, and they found among 0:14:29.400 --> 0:14:35.920 both groups of subjects identified this the shapes the same way. 0:14:36.040 --> 0:14:39.600 The rounded one was Buba and the jagged one was Kiki. 0:14:40.200 --> 0:14:42.360 Which this this is phenomenal when you sit there and 0:14:42.400 --> 0:14:45.800 think about how different languages from different parts of the world, 0:14:46.800 --> 0:14:49.640 you know, where they don't share a at least they 0:14:49.640 --> 0:14:52.680 don't share a common language unless there's some proto language 0:14:52.720 --> 0:14:56.120 that we could talk if Tamil comes from Indo European, 0:14:56.200 --> 0:15:00.480 lots of languages have really really long ago ancestr But 0:15:00.480 --> 0:15:03.480 but you know, considering that like that, like automantapia for 0:15:03.640 --> 0:15:06.320 different animals can be so different. But yet when you 0:15:06.440 --> 0:15:08.560 hear it, you sort of go, like, no, Jon, that's 0:15:08.600 --> 0:15:10.800 absolutely the sound that a cat makes. Okay, that makes 0:15:10.840 --> 0:15:16.560 perfect sense. That kel says chazoo. Where's the kel Eastern 0:15:16.640 --> 0:15:20.640 Europe apparently? Uh? But no, no, like like, like my 0:15:20.720 --> 0:15:23.560 example was going to be more about you know, Asian languages, 0:15:23.600 --> 0:15:27.800 where you have intonation, you have a tonality too words 0:15:27.880 --> 0:15:30.880 that is, and that's totally different from things that we'd 0:15:30.880 --> 0:15:33.640 find in a lot of Western languages where you don't 0:15:33.680 --> 0:15:35.680 have to worry about a rising tone or a falling 0:15:35.720 --> 0:15:38.400 tone to a word. If I say a word, whether 0:15:38.480 --> 0:15:41.240 I'm doing a rising tone or lowering, the tone doesn't 0:15:41.320 --> 0:15:43.480 change the meaning of the word. It might make it 0:15:43.480 --> 0:15:46.600 sound like I'm asking a question, but I'm not changing 0:15:46.600 --> 0:15:48.880 the meaning of the word, whereas in some Asian languages 0:15:49.160 --> 0:15:52.000 that's actually the case, where it's not just the pronunciation 0:15:52.080 --> 0:15:55.040 but how the inflection is there, and that the whether 0:15:55.160 --> 0:15:57.840 or not there's a specific kind of tone. To me, 0:15:57.920 --> 0:16:02.240 it's interesting that despite those the sort of very basic 0:16:02.320 --> 0:16:06.240 differences in the language, you can still find this commonality. Yeah. Um. 0:16:06.360 --> 0:16:08.480 So there are lots of different theories about what might 0:16:08.560 --> 0:16:12.760 explain this association. Some say that, uh, well, some focus 0:16:12.760 --> 0:16:15.040 on or is it the consonants in the words or 0:16:15.080 --> 0:16:17.680 the vowels in the words that cause this, So you 0:16:17.720 --> 0:16:20.960 can switch them around and try to mess with that 0:16:21.000 --> 0:16:24.000 and see if it changes the result. Um. Some would say, 0:16:24.120 --> 0:16:27.440 well is it um? Is it based on the shape 0:16:27.520 --> 0:16:30.480 your mouth is making when you say the word, or 0:16:30.560 --> 0:16:38.040 something more intrinsic about how the word sounds to you. Um. 0:16:38.160 --> 0:16:41.840 All very interesting, but the important takeaway is that words 0:16:41.920 --> 0:16:45.400 aren't neutral. I mean, isn't that strange? Just consonants that 0:16:45.480 --> 0:16:53.240 have no predefined meaning still suggest things to the mind 0:16:53.320 --> 0:16:56.520 in this kind of what's been called like a synesthesia, 0:16:56.680 --> 0:16:59.520 like mapping. Interesting. So so even when we don't have 0:16:59.600 --> 0:17:01.920 kind of ations like you know, not that many babies 0:17:01.960 --> 0:17:05.159 are named Adolph anymore for very very good reasons, or 0:17:05.280 --> 0:17:08.639 or Damien, you know, after Rosemary's baby was kind of unpopular. 0:17:08.720 --> 0:17:11.479 That would be an association based on history, right exactly. 0:17:11.560 --> 0:17:13.920 But these are completely freeform associations, right, So it might 0:17:13.960 --> 0:17:16.240 be that a baby named Adolph, even if there'd never 0:17:16.320 --> 0:17:19.080 been a bad person named Adolph, there might be a 0:17:19.080 --> 0:17:22.920 situation in which, for one reason or another, Adolph sounds 0:17:23.040 --> 0:17:25.960 like a positive name to people, or maybe sounds like 0:17:26.000 --> 0:17:28.760 a negative one. Yeah, that actually brings me up to 0:17:29.480 --> 0:17:31.000 h I was going to talk about some of the 0:17:31.080 --> 0:17:36.119 scholarship done on various various concepts around naming, some of 0:17:36.200 --> 0:17:39.080 which some of which seems a little vague to me, 0:17:39.200 --> 0:17:41.560 but it's probably because I haven't been able to read 0:17:41.600 --> 0:17:43.640 the whole paper. In a couple of cases, I did 0:17:43.640 --> 0:17:46.880 get the whole paper for many of these, but one specifically, 0:17:46.920 --> 0:17:48.560 the first one I wanted to talk about is name 0:17:48.640 --> 0:17:52.760 valence and physical attractiveness in Facebook their compensatory effects on 0:17:52.800 --> 0:17:56.639 friendship acceptance. So this one I read the abstract, but 0:17:56.640 --> 0:17:59.000 I didn't have access to the full article before we 0:17:59.080 --> 0:18:02.000 could go into you recording. And the reason why I 0:18:02.040 --> 0:18:04.480 call this one a little vague is here's the abstract, 0:18:04.640 --> 0:18:07.280 um or at least here's here's what I wrote about 0:18:07.280 --> 0:18:11.560 the abstract. They talked about two factors that can influence 0:18:11.600 --> 0:18:15.280 whether or not you accept someone's friend request on Facebook. Now, 0:18:15.320 --> 0:18:18.240 this is, I guess, assuming that you do not already 0:18:18.359 --> 0:18:21.160 know the person. So it's not like some old friend 0:18:21.240 --> 0:18:23.760 contacting you. It's someone out of the blue contacting you 0:18:23.800 --> 0:18:26.920 on Facebook to be your friend. And that's that's the 0:18:26.960 --> 0:18:29.760 definition of your friendship with them. It's a Facebook friend. 0:18:30.400 --> 0:18:33.040 He said. The two factors that they were looking at 0:18:33.080 --> 0:18:37.240 were attractiveness of the person's photo and the whether or 0:18:37.240 --> 0:18:41.840 not their name sounded quote positive or quote negative. I 0:18:41.920 --> 0:18:44.840 don't know what positive and negative means, but it's not 0:18:44.920 --> 0:18:48.760 defined within the abstract. So without those definitions, I cannot 0:18:48.880 --> 0:18:52.280 really say what they're talking about. I mean, were they 0:18:52.320 --> 0:18:57.240 going with names that are culturally pleasing in the sense 0:18:57.280 --> 0:19:01.920 that they're very popular at a certain time, or that 0:19:01.960 --> 0:19:05.480 they are unique names, or that they just sound like 0:19:05.480 --> 0:19:08.280 I don't know whether criteria are for positive versus negative, 0:19:08.520 --> 0:19:11.560 so I don't know what positive and negative necessarily mean 0:19:11.600 --> 0:19:14.600 in the context of this study. However, according to the abstract, 0:19:14.640 --> 0:19:19.000 what happened was they found that, uh, the more attractive 0:19:19.359 --> 0:19:22.600 a a picture was, the more likely someone would accept 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:25.200 a friend request. The more positive the name, the more 0:19:25.240 --> 0:19:29.040 likely someone to accept our friend request, and that if 0:19:29.080 --> 0:19:32.920 the name sounded more positive, it could balance out a 0:19:33.119 --> 0:19:35.800 picture that was deemed less attractive. To me, this is 0:19:35.880 --> 0:19:39.080 kind of tricky because attractive and positive are both very 0:19:39.119 --> 0:19:41.919 subjective terms, so I'm not really sure, Like, did they 0:19:41.920 --> 0:19:43.639 show this to a robot and the robot gave a 0:19:43.720 --> 0:19:47.160 thumbs up for attractive and a thumbs down form I'm sure. 0:19:47.240 --> 0:19:49.720 I'm sure that they explained to their methodology. I'm sure, 0:19:49.800 --> 0:19:51.399 And I just wasn't able to read all of it. 0:19:51.800 --> 0:19:54.000 But when I was able to read, was the name 0:19:54.040 --> 0:19:59.240 pronunciation effect why people like Mr Smith more than Mr Cahun? Right? 0:19:59.440 --> 0:20:01.679 I I I think I heard about that one Calhoun. 0:20:01.760 --> 0:20:04.040 By the way, it's spelled c O l q U 0:20:04.400 --> 0:20:07.080 H U O N. And the whole idea is that 0:20:07.320 --> 0:20:10.480 people who have names that are more easily pronounced tend 0:20:10.560 --> 0:20:13.960 to have a better time of it. It looks like 0:20:14.000 --> 0:20:16.960 according to the study, they looked at law firms, and 0:20:17.000 --> 0:20:19.639 I looked at where people fell in the hierarchy of 0:20:19.680 --> 0:20:22.920 their law firms, and the study said that the people 0:20:22.920 --> 0:20:27.320 who had more easily pronounceable names rose higher in their 0:20:27.400 --> 0:20:30.359 law firms than people who had more difficult to pronounce names. 0:20:30.640 --> 0:20:34.639 Now this whole pronounce easy to pronounce versus difficult to pronounce. 0:20:34.720 --> 0:20:37.440 It didn't matter how long the name was. It didn't 0:20:37.480 --> 0:20:42.000 matter if the name was was familiar or foreign sounding. 0:20:42.359 --> 0:20:45.040 It just mattered whether or not it was easy to pronounce. 0:20:45.560 --> 0:20:48.080 So it doesn't, you know, it doesn't mean that someone 0:20:48.080 --> 0:20:50.919 who has a last name that wouldn't normally be found 0:20:50.920 --> 0:20:54.600 in that region would not rise very quickly compared to others. 0:20:55.000 --> 0:20:56.600 It just had to be easy to pronounce. If it 0:20:56.600 --> 0:20:59.240 was hard to pronounce, they didn't rise as quickly according 0:20:59.280 --> 0:21:03.200 to this study, h which I thought was kind of interesting. 0:21:03.520 --> 0:21:06.120 There was another one called it a study in Germany, 0:21:06.320 --> 0:21:09.040 which makes sense when you hear the title, It pays 0:21:09.119 --> 0:21:12.680 to be Eric Kaiser Uh and this one. They found 0:21:12.680 --> 0:21:16.640 that people who had noble sounding last names tended to 0:21:16.760 --> 0:21:20.640 have higher UH positions of authority, even if the last 0:21:20.720 --> 0:21:24.960 name had no actual connection to any nobility whatsoever. So 0:21:25.000 --> 0:21:27.840 if you had a last name like Kaiser, then that 0:21:27.880 --> 0:21:30.480 would mean that, you know, you had the potential to 0:21:30.640 --> 0:21:33.160 rise more quickly than people who might have a last 0:21:33.240 --> 0:21:37.159 name like Becker, for you know, a more common the 0:21:37.200 --> 0:21:40.800 equivalent of like if someone named Vanderbilt versus Clampett came 0:21:40.840 --> 0:21:43.120 into your office looking for a job. I suppose It's 0:21:43.160 --> 0:21:45.520 it's hard to say, because if you're talking about noble 0:21:45.640 --> 0:21:49.720 sounding here in the US, you might have a someone 0:21:49.760 --> 0:21:51.960 with the last name of prince or king, and I 0:21:51.960 --> 0:21:53.639 don't know that that would necessarily work. If they had 0:21:53.640 --> 0:21:56.760 a last name of president, who knows, but no, if 0:21:56.760 --> 0:21:59.320 they had a last name like that was perhaps a 0:21:59.400 --> 0:22:03.440 presidential last name, that might be more akin. It's hard 0:22:03.480 --> 0:22:07.320 to say, because you know, Vanderbilts definitely do have a 0:22:07.320 --> 0:22:10.520 certain connotation. You know Carnegie would as well. That's sort 0:22:10.560 --> 0:22:13.399 of thing. These these big names in UH in in 0:22:13.480 --> 0:22:18.760 American history and specifically in financial history in America. UH. 0:22:18.760 --> 0:22:21.480 And the last one I looked at was do names matter. 0:22:21.600 --> 0:22:25.520 The influence of names on perception about professionals in Spain. Now, 0:22:25.560 --> 0:22:29.000 this one was interesting because it actually found that there 0:22:29.000 --> 0:22:33.160 did not seem to be a strong correlation between people's 0:22:33.160 --> 0:22:36.040 perceptions of a person's ability to do his or her 0:22:36.119 --> 0:22:38.879 job and that person's name. So if you had a 0:22:38.960 --> 0:22:41.520 name that was difficult to pronounce, or a name that 0:22:41.720 --> 0:22:45.439