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Interesting news items
posted at 11:19 PM  
What's in a name? Linguist Amy Perfors can give you an idea:
Men with "front vowels" in their names -- sounds formed at the front of the mouth like the "a" in Matt -- were considered sexier than men with "back vowel" sounds like the "au" in Paul, she concluded. Not sure I agree with her analysis, which is presumably based on prior work that isn't cited:
Perfors said front vowels are often perceived as "smaller" than back vowels, so the difference could be a sign that women are seeking men that are sensitive or gentle, traits usually perceived as feminine. I don't know, I don't think of Matt as being a more feminine name than Paul. Do you?
The cure for what ails me. Yes, that's right; scientists have discovered a possible cure for procrastination. (Now I just have to wonder: do I really want to be a workaholic? Meh...I'll think about it later.)
Colin Powell, the cat, will meet on Friday with Colin Powell, the secretary of state. This is very important.
Colin Powell, the secretary of state, has agreed to a meeting in the State Department's Treaty Room on the seventh floor ― for pictures, not dialogue.
The room has served lofty purposes through history, including the signing of important treaties. ...hence the name "Treaty Room". Duh. :P
Where our nation is headed. Someday, we will all be grafted to our couches, defecating on ourselves until we die horrible deaths. Thanks to Matt for alerting me to this lovely story, and to BoingBoing for the link to the expanded article.
And finally, people going to PAX are so lucky. Look at this awesome Spider-Man toy they get. Assholes!
Comments
My international friends and I have been having a discussion about this name study for the last few days. The main question: Does this argument extend into other languages? Well, it appears Indo-European, yes. Similar stories have appeared (derived from the same study, of course) and Matt is used universally in articles. However, take Russian: Matt = Matvei -- said with a back-of-the-throat 'ah' not a front-of-the-mouth 'a'. My not-so-original theory on the whole affair is that the name Matt is actually unique. Matt is reminiscent of "ma ma", which is the universal term for mother. That term itself comes from the sound that is made when a baby signs with its lips that it wants to feed. Notice that this study doesn't say that a front-vowel name makes a man attractive to a woman, only that it reinforces it, if she already has that opinion. So, 1) woman sees man; 2) likes man; 3) hears that man's name is Matt; 4) at some deep level associates this name and pretty face with the loyalty and innocense of a child.
PS: If there are any Kindergarten teachers reading your blog, please not that five years from now your classes will have a higher frequency of Matts.
The "a" sound in "Matt" and "ma ma" are not the same sound...at least, not where I live. The "a" in "ma ma" is the same as the "a" in "hall" and is almost equivalent to the "au" in "Paul" in my speech (whereas I know up north, the "au" gets morphed into something like an "ou" diphthong). The "a" in "Matt" is like the "a" in "cat", spoken in a different place in the mouth.
Vowels are extraordinarily hard to differentiate. I basically had to sit here and repeat words over and over to try and tell what my mouth was doing during the vowels :>
Right. Which is why my point about Matt and ma ma doesn't revolve around the vowel sound at all. I said it was the association with suckling.
Okay, I don't understand your point at all, then. How is "Matt" like "ma ma" or suckling?
The theory on why pretty much every language on the planet should have the same infant word for mother -- "ma" -- is that it derives from the lip action an infant makes when he or she is calling for a breast. That's something that's universal among infants. [The term for father, on the other hand, varies widely among language families.] My point, thus, was that the heightened attraction of male names like Matt might derive more from a construction that's similar to the feeding call than from its vowels.
So any male name that begins with /m/ plus vowel? Or /m/ plus unrounded vowel?
Don't have an informed opinion on that. I'm extracting it only for Matt. Not my field.
What I'm getting at is this. Is "Matt" somehow similar to "ma ma" in ways that other male names beginning with /m/ are not? Or, are you making this correlation based on the fact that all news articles mentioned the name "Matt"? Is there some other reason?
In other words, do you have some logical reason for comparing "Matt" to "ma ma", or are you making the comparison purely because it's your name?
Well, since we should think critically of studies such as this one, that's what I'm doing. And by doing so, I've suggested an alternative explanation for the name ubiquitous-to-these-articles: Matt. Certainly, my prolonged thought on the matter had to do with it being my name. Might Matt be different from Mike, Max, or Mark? Perhaps; perhaps not. But, to properly examine the matter would take a formal study or a person of highly specialized knowledge. In thinking critically about the matter, I don't have to prove my point, only substantiate it to a level of plausibility. That, I've done. The original study proposed that front-formed vowels are more feminine and for women reinforce the perceived attractiveness of men. The name Matt was featured prominently in this story and thus it was the topic of discussion among my international friends and me. We determined that the name Matt can have very gluttoral forms in some languages. Does the vowel hypothesis hold? Would gluttoral forms of Matt still heighten attractiveness? If so, might there be an alternative explanation for why Matt would be attractive? The feeding-call explanation might be an alternative explanation for Matt. You would have to answer all these questions before you could ever broaden the discussion to Mike, Mark, etc, which is why I strongly hesitate to do so because I can't answer the first-tier questions. But that doesn't detract from the plausibility (given the level of awareness of the topic) of the suggestion.
Okay.
I don't believe that the use of the name Matt in all the articles is enough evidence to lend plausibility to your hypothesis. The articles all probably copied off each other; that happens pretty regularly these days.
In order to prove a correlation in linguistics, you have to prove not only that a correlation is possible, but that other similar forms do not have a correlation. In other words, you have to define what the correlation is, in total. By examining other forms (if any) of the correlation, you discover the overall pattern (or whether or not it's a fluke).
That's why I was mentioning the vowels to begin with (a matching vowel would make a correlation far more plausible), and then other similar forms (is there any evidence, other than the use of the name "Matt" in the articles, that "Matt" is more attractive than the other names used in the study? This seems to be what you are implying).
You make two assertions. 1) "Matt" is similar to the sound of a baby calling for a breast. 2) Speech resembling the sound of a baby calling for a breast is attractive to women.
I don't see any convincing reasoning for 1. 2 is an interesting theory, and I'd like to be able to explore it, but unfortunately the only "evidence" for 2 is 1, which has not yet been proven.
I realize that this is more philosophical than anything, since to prove a correlation we would have to do a study, but I'm failing to see even the plausibility of the correlation.
We cannot, in other words, say that the reason "Matt" is an attractive name is because it is similar to the cry of a baby, because we have not shown how "Matt" is similar to the cry of a baby, nor have we shown that speech resembling a baby's cry is attractive to women.
A little more on the "Matt" being similar to a baby's cry thing...
"Matt" must somehow be differentiated from all other names beginning with /m/ (or /m/ + some kind of vowel) in order to make the claim that it is singularly similar to "ma ma" and that is why it is attractive. (If other names are similar to "ma ma" in the same way that "Matt" is, then why weren't they used in all the articles? For your argument not to break down, there has to be something that makes "Matt" unique.)
Discussions of other languages are interesting but provide no insight into this question, as we have no data on what names are attractive in those languages. There is nothing to prove that name cognates would remain semantically parallel (or even phonetically parallel), either.
I hope that makes sense...
Actually, the article was an AP release, so that sufficiently explains the widespread use of it, even in the international press. There's no copying, just capitalism going on. Yes, that's pretty regular practice these days. However, in the German press German names were substituted in the article with the exception of Matt.
I never said or implied there was anything special about the name Matt. It's simply the example that's been used in every article that I or my friends have seen published on the subject. Thus, it's the name that has been discussed. You're missing the point that spurred this hypothesis. It has nothing to do with the article, it has to do with secondary arguments, which I've mentioned from the beginning, concerning forms of Matt in different languages.
You ask, "[I]s there any evidence, other than the use of the name "Matt" in the articles, that "Matt" is more attractive than the other names used in the study?" It's clear from the article that the study suggested, if not concluded, that, yes, Matt and names like it, heighten attractiveness more than names like Boris. However, if you're saying that I said Matt is a better name than, say, Lance -- both of which have front-formed vowels -- then I never argued that. If that's what you're saying, that's your own construction.
Once more: Matt was the topic of discussion because it was a universal feature in the articles all over the globe, even though many articles in other countries, if not all articles, added vernacular names to the mix. This fact made us question the validity of the argument. The 'a' in Matt isn't the same the world over.
Now, here is an entire study from MIT that postulates that front-formed vowels in the names of men heighten for women the attractiveness of men because the sounds somehow signify sensitivity and this fact is said to be desirable for women. This entire premise is very flimsy -- interesting, but flimsy. The study most strongly found that names can heighten attractiveness on the website "Hot or Not." It less strongly demonstrated that this fact is connected to front-formed vowels. It's weakest argument was that women found this attractive because it signifies a supposed desire among women for sensitivity.
From the article, we do not know much about the conditions under which the study was conducted on "Hot or Not". What demographic of woman most commonly visits this website? Was there any mechanism to prevent men from participating? Could gay men vote? Would the average woman and gay man look for the same qualities in a man? The Internet's a wonderful thing, but this study really needed to be conducted in a far more controlled environment.
We have good reason to be very skeptical of the author's conclusions, especially considering the example of Matt. Since a website was used, theoretically participants could have come from all over the world. A woman in Russian reading the name "Matt" wouldn't say it to herself the same way an American would. In fact, thanks to the internationalization of Yale, on a daily basis I'm more commonly known as "Maht" than "Mat".
You're right to argue that I haven't demonstrated that, "Speech resembling the sound of a baby calling for a breast is attractive to women." However, from what we know of the article, holding the author of the study to a similar standard regarding front-formed vowels and sensitivity would yield a similar failure.
I never argued, however, as you say that the word "'Matt' is similar to the sound of a baby calling for a breast." I'm simply saying that "m" in Matt is the same as the "m" from infant suckling fame that gave the world the word "ma ma."
Is it a far-fetched suggestion? Arguably not within the context of an otherwise far-fetched study. What we don't know is whether women (especially when we don't know much about the people participating) reading the name Matt on this website were reading it to themselves the same way. That's a major problem when you're trying to extract conclusions about front-formed vowels.
There are a number of associations that could be at work here. And there is the real possiblity that there is no pattern to the phenomenon at all. It could be that the frequency of front-formed vowel names is much higher than that of the back-formed ones. In that case, could it be an association of familiarity? Perhaps because those names occur more frequently, we feel they are more popular. Therefore popularity equals quality.
If we are to accept the author's premise that women associate front-formed vowels with sensitivity in men, then I don't think it's unreasonable to postulate that perhaps women would find the 'm' sound indicative of sensitivity, too, given its powerful association with infants.
Now, the author's theory would have the advantage that it would encompass all front-formed vowel names. The 'm' theory does not. I'm not convinced, however, that there is such a front-formed vowel phenomenon. The first question to ask is, do women around the world find Matt an attractiveness enhancer; if the answer is yes, then the second question to ask is, are these women internalizing Matt with a front-formed or gluttoral 'a'. If the answer isn't uniform, then there must be another reason and, if we are to agree the author's premise that the answer is linked to perceived 'sensitivity', then the 'm' theory certainly meets an acceptible level of plausibility, given the level at which this study was conducted.
Her hypothesis was not that frontal vowels are feminine and therefore women must be looking for feminine men. That was a tangent she went off on, as scientists are wont to do in the analysis section. That part of the project is typically what gets reported because it's the most interesting, but it's also the part that has the least amount to do with what was actually "proven" in the study.
As you surely noticed, I also expressed disdain for her grasping-at-straws conclusion.
If you were attempting to mock her seemingly random correlation with one of your own, then I apologize for taking you seriously.
What a really questionable statement: Am I serious? No, of course not, which is why I would write several thousand words on the subject in my spare time this Friday.
I posed a theory, I framed that theory, and I defended it as plausible. Is it right? Chances are slim to none. Is it plausible? Within the careful construct of my argument, absolutely. I wasn't, however, being philosophical. It's an abstraction built on assumptions, assumptions that are quite easily permitted from what we know and don't know about the original study.
You seem to what to have your cake and eat it too. You want to say it's a wrong idea and that's it's not plausible. I agree totally with the first because I never asserted that it was correct. It was always a theory, from the beginning. When you try to deny it plausibility, however, you make the task before you far more difficult. But to challenge my assumptions, you'd have to have answers to specific questions about how the study was conducted. And I don't think you have those.
I wasn't trying to upset you. I'm having a hard time understanding your argument. I'm beginning to think it's because I've studied linguistics, and I think like a person who's studied linguistics. I look for certain things in a hypothesis about linguistics, and I understand linguistic studies in a certain way. I'm not sure I can compartmentalize the linguistic scientific method any more than I already have, except to mention that all linguistics is built on prior work/assumptions. (All science is, but linguistics is unique in that it is a relatively new science; there's not much to go on.)
At any rate, I don't know if we're going to get to a point where we understand each other. I wish I was better at expressing how I analyze linguistics, and at understanding where you're coming from.
Apologies for all the trouble.
You didn't upset me. I actually saw you as the emotive one with that particular post.
I don't know that there's anything you said I didn't "get". It sort of seems to me that you're playing the "I studied linguistics card and we're not communicating" card as a cop out. I made a rather simple, straightforward argument and the bulk (if not all) of your argument against it had not a thing to do with linguistics. This study is as much anthropology as linguistics. Now, since I had dinner tonight and discussed all this with a Yale anthropology PhD student, I can play the whole, "My Yale anthropology PhD student friend assures me that my idea is not measurably less plausible than the original study's conclusions" card.
Linguistics is actually one of the four subsets of anthropology :) So you're right, the same general rules apply.
I'm afraid I'm unable to understand your position, despite your varied explanations. I may have misinterpreted your intent from the beginning. In any event, I'm happy to let it go. It's not important to me to prove you wrong anymore, because I'm not sure I even know what you were trying to say.
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