Word: songs
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Davies was actually quite good. He exuded a recognizably freshman earnestness into each clever word of his original songs about complicated romantic situations. I particularly liked his song about resurrected love, as a woman reunites with the man who joined the clergy when she spurned him 27 years ago. His “Autobiography of a Bum” was cool too. For the first fifteen minutes of the performance I imagined I was in the 1940's, a girl with her ear pressed against a radio, tuned to bluegrass. After the last few spectators wandered...
...what psychologists couldn't determine for sure is why we're so drawn to brevity. Is it nothing more than laziness - why master Salvatore when Sal will do? - or is something else involved? To study that, University of Michigan psychologists Norbert Schwarz and Hyunjin Song devised a test. (Read "Are Direct-to-Consumer Drug Ads Doomed...
...Schwarz and Song then repeated the study with a new group of students and a new group of words. This time, the subjects were told that the invented names belonged not to food additives but to amusement-park rides - something for which an element of danger is often part of the appeal. The results were similar: a ride with a name like the Chunta was perceived to be a less dangerous choice than one named the Vaiveahtoishi. But the Vaiveahtoishi was also described as likely to be more exciting. The lesson for marketers is obvious. (Read "Getting Closer...
...Insurance companies and food manufacturers may value safety, and easy-to-process names would appeal to their consumers more," says Song. "Adventure-travel packages and risky sports such as bungee jumping might want to use harder names." When a product like the Scirocco folds, it might have been done in not just by the nonintuitive pronunciation of the name (shi-rock-o), but also by its definiton: a hot desert wind. That's a double-dose of danger that could simply be too much for safety-conscious consumers. (See TIME's special report on the environment...
...worth the effort? Eleutheria, after all, is a Greek name that means free. The bad news for kids whose parents couldn't keep it simple is that uncommon monikers do present problems - at least at first. "People may not necessarily be perceived as more dangerous," Song says. "But if all you know is their name, they may seem riskier to approach or hire...