Basically storms named after women kill more people on average because people may view them as less threatening, and are less likely to evacuate; or so say the authors.
Quote:
"In judging the intensity of a storm, people appear to be applying their beliefs about how men and women behave," said Sharon Shavitt, a professor of marketing at Illinois and a co-author of the report. "This makes a female-named hurricane, especially one with a very feminine name such as Belle or Cindy, seem gentler and less violent."
In a follow-up set of experiments, Jung and his colleagues examined how the gender of names directly affected people's judgments about storms. They found that people who were asked to imagine being in the path of "Hurricane Alexandra" (or "Christina" or "Victoria") rated the storm as less risky and intense compared to those asked to imagine being in the path of "Hurricane Alexander" (or "Christopher" or "Victor").
In a follow-up set of experiments, Jung and his colleagues examined how the gender of names directly affected people's judgments about storms. They found that people who were asked to imagine being in the path of "Hurricane Alexandra" (or "Christina" or "Victoria") rated the storm as less risky and intense compared to those asked to imagine being in the path of "Hurricane Alexander" (or "Christopher" or "Victor").
And there's more...
Quote:
"Such gender biases are pervasive and implicit," said Madhu Viswanathan, a professor of marketing at Illinois and a co-author of the study. "We found that people were affected by the gender of hurricane names regardless of whether they explicitly endorsed the idea that women and men have different traits. This appears to be a widespread phenomenon."
So today's question is:
Should we rename all storms to masculine names to save more lives?
| No, people are the problem, we need to fix them.: |    | 6 (33.3%) |
| Yes, anything to save lives!: | | 0 (0.0%) |
| Name them something else, maybe gender neutral or after our favorite snakes or something.: | | 4 (22.2%) |
| This is why people don't name tornados.: | | 4 (22.2%) |
| Your poll doesn't have a beer option.: | | 4 (22.2%) |
| Total: | 18 |
Thoughts?
I'm kind of leaning towards option #3, or maybe something more menacing sounding; monstrous killer death storm from hell or what not.
