Do You Use Somebody's First Name or Last Name? The Answer Speaks Volumes.

[question everything]

When discussing prominent figures in literature, we may mention such giants as Jane Austen, Hemingway, Dickens and Virginia Woolf. In contemporary politics, perhaps we’ll bring up Obama, Trump, Angela Merkel and Theresa May.

Did you notice anything odd about the preceding paragraph? There’s clearly a pattern: We referred to the women by full name and to the men by surname alone. That’s a tendency that’s common in many professional fields—and it could be a disadvantage for women.

In our research, we have discovered that people were more than twice as likely to refer to male professionals by surname only as they were to refer to female professionals that way. We also found that people generally regarded scientists referred to only by surname as more famous and eminent, a judgment that could result in more awards, funding and other career benefits.

Taken together, those findings suggest that the difference in the way we tend to refer to women and men might lead to gender bias in workplaces of all kinds.

In one of our studies, we analyzed hundreds of transcripts of political segments from radio shows—such as “Fresh Air,” hosted by Terry Gross, and “The Rush Limbaugh Show”—from 2014 and 2015. We examined how often pundits referred to politicians by surname only. Surname references made up 30% of all references to male politicians and 13% percent of references to female politicians.

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In a series of experiments, we asked participants to read about a few fictional scientific researchers. Some of the researchers were referred to by only their surname and some by their full name with a gender-neutral first name—Casey Boland, for instance. People consistently judged the surname-only researchers as more famous and eminent in their field than the full-name researchers. This was true even when two groups read identical information about the same researcher, who was referred to only by surname for one group and by full name for the other group.

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So, the next time you and your friends are discussing your favorite up-and-coming politicians, or people in your own field, take note of how you refer to the men versus the women. You might be communicating more than you realize.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/do-you-use-somebodys-first-name-or-last-name-the-answer-speaks-volumes-1534125720 (paid subscription)

Dr. Atir is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Dr. Ferguson is a professor and chair of the psychology department at Cornell University.