Media Production Reflection

Overall, I found it pretty challenging having to summarize a whole research article and not exceed the word count of the original news article. The news article had just over 600 words and so upon starting my article, I was sure it would take a lot to reach that word length, but quite the opposite happened. As a result, I had to cut out a lot of the details mentioned in the research article, specifically with respect to how each study was conducted. This was hard to do because the researchers conducted 5 studies. Upon finishing my article though, I realized I had not really cut out much important information. The details which I cut out were not totally necessary for my article, as they included things like the types of statistical analyses used, the ethnicities of the surnames used for ranking, and how the researchers operationalized their variables. I also chose to leave out the fact some of the studies involved breaking the participants up into groups because the research article did not make it clear whether or not random assignment was used. I also refrained from claiming that the results were not generalizable because it was unknown how the researchers obtained their samples.

Before beginning the article, I first came up with my title. Trying to come up with a title which would draw readers in without promoting false information was tricky. But this just made me take-on the perspective of a journalist and better understand what journalism entails. After completing this series of writing projects, I understand the difficulty with which journalists summarize research findings, having to be very careful not to plagiarize. I also am impressed with how the author of the original news article researched information outside of the studies to include in his article. Overall, I understand a bit more the difficulty with which journalists try to inform the public by researching/summarizing experiments and adding elements which will attract readers.

When it came to deciding what information to leave out so as to not exceed the word count, there were a few things I made sure to add to my article. I first made sure that I emphasized the correlational aspect of the findings. I next made sure to include the ethnicities of the participants, along with the fact that the researchers themselves decided what names were easy and difficult to pronounce. These inclusions were useful for my commentary in the article, as I offered a little critique on the experimental design. Finally, I made sure to quote the researchers on their addressed limitations, along with adding my own commentary on these limitations.

Media Production Reflection

Overall, I found it pretty challenging having to summarize a whole research article and not exceed the word count of the original news article. The news article had just over 600 words and so upon starting my article, I was sure it would take a lot to reach that word length, but quite the opposite happened. As a result, I had to cut out a lot of the details mentioned in the research article, specifically with respect to how each study was conducted. This was hard to do because the researchers conducted 5 studies. Upon finishing my article though, I realized I had not really cut out much important information. The details which I cut out were not totally necessary for my article, as they included things like the types of statistical analyses used, the ethnicities of the surnames used for ranking, and how the researchers operationalized their variables. I also chose to leave out the fact some of the studies involved breaking the participants up into groups because the research article did not make it clear whether or not random assignment was used. I also refrained from claiming that the results were not generalizable because it was unknown how the researchers obtained their samples.

Before beginning the article, I first came up with my title. Trying to come up with a title which would draw readers in without promoting false information was tricky. But this just made me take-on the perspective of a journalist and better understand what journalism entails. After completing this series of writing projects, I understand the difficulty with which journalists summarize research findings, having to be very careful not to plagiarize. I also am impressed with how the author of the original news article researched information outside of the studies to include in his article. Overall, I understand a bit more the difficulty with which journalists try to inform the public by researching/summarizing experiments and adding elements which will attract readers.

When it came to deciding what information to leave out so as to not exceed the word count, there were a few things I made sure to add to my article. I first made sure that I emphasized the correlational aspect of the findings. I next made sure to include the ethnicities of the participants, along with the fact that the researchers themselves decided what names were easy and difficult to pronounce. These inclusions were useful for my commentary in the article, as I offered a little critique on the experimental design. Finally, I made sure to quote the researchers on their addressed limitations, along with adding my own commentary on these limitations.

Media Production Reflection

Overall, I found it pretty challenging having to summarize a whole research article and not exceed the word count of the original news article. The news article had just over 600 words and so upon starting my article, I was sure it would take a lot to reach that word length, but quite the opposite happened. As a result, I had to cut out a lot of the details mentioned in the research article, specifically with respect to how each study was conducted. This was hard to do because the researchers conducted 5 studies. Upon finishing my article though, I realized I had not really cut out much important information. The details which I cut out were not totally necessary for my article, as they included things like the types of statistical analyses used, the ethnicities of the surnames used for ranking, and how the researchers operationalized their variables. I also chose to leave out the fact some of the studies involved breaking the participants up into groups because the research article did not make it clear whether or not random assignment was used. I also refrained from claiming that the results were not generalizable because it was unknown how the researchers obtained their samples.

Before beginning the article, I first came up with my title. Trying to come up with a title which would draw readers in without promoting false information was tricky. But this just made me take-on the perspective of a journalist and better understand what journalism entails. After completing this series of writing projects, I understand the difficulty with which journalists summarize research findings, having to be very careful not to plagiarize. I also am impressed with how the author of the original news article researched information outside of the studies to include in his article. Overall, I understand a bit more the difficulty with which journalists try to inform the public by researching/summarizing experiments and adding elements which will attract readers.

When it came to deciding what information to leave out so as to not exceed the word count, there were a few things I made sure to add to my article. I first made sure that I emphasized the correlational aspect of the findings. I next made sure to include the ethnicities of the participants, along with the fact that the researchers themselves decided what names were easy and difficult to pronounce. These inclusions were useful for my commentary in the article, as I offered a little critique on the experimental design. Finally, I made sure to quote the researchers on their addressed limitations, along with adding my own commentary on these limitations.

Media Production Reflection

Overall, I found it pretty challenging having to summarize a whole research article and not exceed the word count of the original news article. The news article had just over 600 words and so upon starting my article, I was sure it would take a lot to reach that word length, but quite the opposite happened. As a result, I had to cut out a lot of the details mentioned in the research article, specifically with respect to how each study was conducted. This was hard to do because the researchers conducted 5 studies. Upon finishing my article though, I realized I had not really cut out much important information. The details which I cut out were not totally necessary for my article, as they included things like the types of statistical analyses used, the ethnicities of the surnames used for ranking, and how the researchers operationalized their variables. I also chose to leave out the fact some of the studies involved breaking the participants up into groups because the research article did not make it clear whether or not random assignment was used. I also refrained from claiming that the results were not generalizable because it was unknown how the researchers obtained their samples.

Before beginning the article, I first came up with my title. Trying to come up with a title which would draw readers in without promoting false information was tricky. But this just made me take-on the perspective of a journalist and better understand what journalism entails. After completing this series of writing projects, I understand the difficulty with which journalists summarize research findings, having to be very careful not to plagiarize. I also am impressed with how the author of the original news article researched information outside of the studies to include in his article. Overall, I understand a bit more the difficulty with which journalists try to inform the public by researching/summarizing experiments and adding elements which will attract readers.

When it came to deciding what information to leave out so as to not exceed the word count, there were a few things I made sure to add to my article. I first made sure that I emphasized the correlational aspect of the findings. I next made sure to include the ethnicities of the participants, along with the fact that the researchers themselves decided what names were easy and difficult to pronounce. These inclusions were useful for my commentary in the article, as I offered a little critique on the experimental design. Finally, I made sure to quote the researchers on their addressed limitations, along with adding my own commentary on these limitations.

Media Production Reflection

Overall, I found it pretty challenging having to summarize a whole research article and not exceed the word count of the original news article. The news article had just over 600 words and so upon starting my article, I was sure it would take a lot to reach that word length, but quite the opposite happened. As a result, I had to cut out a lot of the details mentioned in the research article, specifically with respect to how each study was conducted. This was hard to do because the researchers conducted 5 studies. Upon finishing my article though, I realized I had not really cut out much important information. The details which I cut out were not totally necessary for my article, as they included things like the types of statistical analyses used, the ethnicities of the surnames used for ranking, and how the researchers operationalized their variables. I also chose to leave out the fact some of the studies involved breaking the participants up into groups because the research article did not make it clear whether or not random assignment was used. I also refrained from claiming that the results were not generalizable because it was unknown how the researchers obtained their samples.

Before beginning the article, I first came up with my title. Trying to come up with a title which would draw readers in without promoting false information was tricky. But this just made me take-on the perspective of a journalist and better understand what journalism entails. After completing this series of writing projects, I understand the difficulty with which journalists summarize research findings, having to be very careful not to plagiarize. I also am impressed with how the author of the original news article researched information outside of the studies to include in his article. Overall, I understand a bit more the difficulty with which journalists try to inform the public by researching/summarizing experiments and adding elements which will attract readers.

When it came to deciding what information to leave out so as to not exceed the word count, there were a few things I made sure to add to my article. I first made sure that I emphasized the correlational aspect of the findings. I next made sure to include the ethnicities of the participants, along with the fact that the researchers themselves decided what names were easy and difficult to pronounce. These inclusions were useful for my commentary in the article, as I offered a little critique on the experimental design. Finally, I made sure to quote the researchers on their addressed limitations, along with adding my own commentary on these limitations.

Media Production Reflection

Overall, I found it pretty challenging having to summarize a whole research article and not exceed the word count of the original news article. The news article had just over 600 words and so upon starting my article, I was sure it would take a lot to reach that word length, but quite the opposite happened. As a result, I had to cut out a lot of the details mentioned in the research article, specifically with respect to how each study was conducted. This was hard to do because the researchers conducted 5 studies. Upon finishing my article though, I realized I had not really cut out much important information. The details which I cut out were not totally necessary for my article, as they included things like the types of statistical analyses used, the ethnicities of the surnames used for ranking, and how the researchers operationalized their variables. I also chose to leave out the fact some of the studies involved breaking the participants up into groups because the research article did not make it clear whether or not random assignment was used. I also refrained from claiming that the results were not generalizable because it was unknown how the researchers obtained their samples.

Before beginning the article, I first came up with my title. Trying to come up with a title which would draw readers in without promoting false information was tricky. But this just made me take-on the perspective of a journalist and better understand what journalism entails. After completing this series of writing projects, I understand the difficulty with which journalists summarize research findings, having to be very careful not to plagiarize. I also am impressed with how the author of the original news article researched information outside of the studies to include in his article. Overall, I understand a bit more the difficulty with which journalists try to inform the public by researching/summarizing experiments and adding elements which will attract readers.

When it came to deciding what information to leave out so as to not exceed the word count, there were a few things I made sure to add to my article. I first made sure that I emphasized the correlational aspect of the findings. I next made sure to include the ethnicities of the participants, along with the fact that the researchers themselves decided what names were easy and difficult to pronounce. These inclusions were useful for my commentary in the article, as I offered a little critique on the experimental design. Finally, I made sure to quote the researchers on their addressed limitations, along with adding my own commentary on these limitations.

Media Production Reflection

Overall, I found it pretty challenging having to summarize a whole research article and not exceed the word count of the original news article. The news article had just over 600 words and so upon starting my article, I was sure it would take a lot to reach that word length, but quite the opposite happened. As a result, I had to cut out a lot of the details mentioned in the research article, specifically with respect to how each study was conducted. This was hard to do because the researchers conducted 5 studies. Upon finishing my article though, I realized I had not really cut out much important information. The details which I cut out were not totally necessary for my article, as they included things like the types of statistical analyses used, the ethnicities of the surnames used for ranking, and how the researchers operationalized their variables. I also chose to leave out the fact some of the studies involved breaking the participants up into groups because the research article did not make it clear whether or not random assignment was used. I also refrained from claiming that the results were not generalizable because it was unknown how the researchers obtained their samples.

Before beginning the article, I first came up with my title. Trying to come up with a title which would draw readers in without promoting false information was tricky. But this just made me take-on the perspective of a journalist and better understand what journalism entails. After completing this series of writing projects, I understand the difficulty with which journalists summarize research findings, having to be very careful not to plagiarize. I also am impressed with how the author of the original news article researched information outside of the studies to include in his article. Overall, I understand a bit more the difficulty with which journalists try to inform the public by researching/summarizing experiments and adding elements which will attract readers.

When it came to deciding what information to leave out so as to not exceed the word count, there were a few things I made sure to add to my article. I first made sure that I emphasized the correlational aspect of the findings. I next made sure to include the ethnicities of the participants, along with the fact that the researchers themselves decided what names were easy and difficult to pronounce. These inclusions were useful for my commentary in the article, as I offered a little critique on the experimental design. Finally, I made sure to quote the researchers on their addressed limitations, along with adding my own commentary on these limitations.


Easily Pronounceable Names Appear to Promote Likeability and Success

It is no surprise how much power can reside in a name. Perhaps one of the best examples of how influential a person’s name can be is the current American President, as saying his name alone is enough to trigger strong emotions and debate. For the average young adult, on the other hand, it is possible the ease with which their name is pronounced may affect how others judge them. A series of experimental studies published in 2011 revealed a consistent correlation between name fluency and likeability.

The researchers behind these studies included Adam Alter of New York University, along with Simon Laham and Peter Koval, both of the University of Melbourne. They referred back to past research done on “processing fluency,” which is the subjective experience with which one accomplishes a cognitive task with ease or difficulty, to create their hypothesis: the “name-pronunciation effect.” This hypothesis states that easy-to-pronounce names (not based on foreignness or length), along with the people who possess these names, tend to receive more positive feedback from others.

To investigate their hypothesis, the researchers conducted a series of 5 studies. The first involved 35 mostly female participants of Asian ethnicity. The researchers used their own intuitions about pronunciation ease to compile a list of 50 surnames. The participants were asked to rank the surnames on fluency, unusualness, and liking. Statistical analyses showed fluency was correlated with liking, which was not affected by unusualness, length, or orthographic regularity. The second study had 35 mostly female undergraduate students of European ethnicity view a mock ballot consisting of 12 surnames and rank the candidates in order of preference. Statistical analyses revealed the candidates with fluent names ranked significantly higher. The third study involved 74 mostly female undergraduates of European and Asian descent reading a mock newspaper article which outlined information regarding the personal life and policies of a candidate whose surname varied in fluency. Students were asked to rate the degree to which they thought he would be a decent candidate and the ease of surname pronunciation. The researchers found a positive relationship between surname fluency and candidate evaluation. The fourth study asked 55 mostly female undergraduate students to rate surnames presented as belonging to either Australian (in-group) or American (out-group) citizens. For both conditions, fluency was the only predictor correlated with liking. In the final study, the researchers compiled a list of 500 lawyer names and had American undergraduates rate a subset of names in terms of fluency and foreignness. Analyses showed lawyers with easier-to pronounce names, whether Anglo-American or foreign, occupied superior positions.

While the study achieved consistent results, the researchers did mention having a lack of prior research support for their hypothesis. With this in mind, it is important to acknowledge the limiting power of name fluency throughout information-rich environments, as people judge each other based on more information besides name fluency. The researchers hinted at the plausible impracticality of the name-pronunciation effect in their publishing by stating: “Because we often make judgments about others in information-rich environments (in which ample information besides name fluency may be available), pronunciation ease may contribute little.”

Before using these findings to predict your own success or to plan the names of your future children, you may wish to read the full article for yourself and possibly take the findings with a pinch of salt. In doing so, you will recognize that the experimental design consisted of a few flaws, including the likely incorporation of researcher bias (the researchers used their own intuition to decide what names are easy and difficult to pronounce). In addition, seeing as how all of the participants were undergraduate students and how some of the studies only consisted of one ethnicity of participants, it is likely random sampling was not used.

 

 

 

 

Link to news article:                                                                https://www.wired.com/2012/02/name-pronunciation-success/

Link to scholarly journal article: https://ppw.kuleuven.be/okp/_pdf/Laham2012TNPEW.pdf


Cognitive Dissonance

Cognitive dissonance refers to the internal tension which arises when we opt to engage in a behavior which conflicts with our prior beliefs and values. In order to reduce this tension, most people resort to either justifying the behavior by altering their prior values, creating a belief which allows them to justify the behavior, or stopping the behavior altogether. This tension is not uncommon to have. For example, I studied very much during my first semester of organic chemistry. Out of all of the classes I was in, I spent the most time working on Ochem. I used a variety of techniques to try and master the material to a point where I felt comfortable with it. The second exam of the semester did not go so well for me even though I put in so much effort and hard work. Before and even during the exam, I truly believed I was going to do well. When I got the exam back and saw the grade, I did get upset and had much cognitive dissonance, so much so, I came up with multiple beliefs as to why this could be. The first was that it had been the professor’s fault for not teaching the material well, giving such a hard test, and then being super picky when grading it. This was easy for me to believe because most people did not do very well either. Another justification I made was that it really does not matter in the long run because I am only taking the class to get credit to go to medical school; I will not need to apply what I learned (or apparently did not learn) in the future. Although this second realization is kind of true, it really influenced the rest of my semester because it caused me to not study as much for the class. Why study about elimination reactions when really I should be learning more practical things, like how to do taxes? Safe to say, I ended up doing well in the class. Another common example is when I sometimes go out and do community service. While I value the importance of donation drives, I do not enjoy spending 2-3 hours working in the heat. In this case, I tend to convince myself that working in the heat is not so bad.

I have mixed emotions about cognitive dissonance. On one hand, it promotes lies which we tell ourselves. In the video for example, the $1 participants lied to themselves and to others about how enjoyable the task was. I think this is something to be avoided. In addition, altering a past belief is not a healthy thing to do, unless it really is for the better. In my case, I solidly believed I had studied and worked hard enough to prepare for the exam. I am not going to completely rethink this because of a single test score. I also think cognitive dissonance allows us to justify unhealthy behaviors. For example, smokers who justify their behavior by saying it is okay as long as they do not drink or as long as they stick to a certain limit. On the other hand, when it does not result in the justification of unhealthy behaviors, it allows us to regain our emotional equilibrium by promoting a sense of behavioral control and understanding.


Making Stress Your Friend

In her TedTalk, health psychologist Kelly McGonigal says she wants to make you “better” at stress, as she claims stress makes you social. She discusses 3 studies in the talk. The first study was what caused her to change her mind about the way she viewed stress. The study involved tracking the stress levels of 30,000 adults in the U.S. for 8 years. The results showed people who were stressed while finding stress to be harmful had a 43% greater chance of dying. Those who were stressed but did not find stress to be harmful had the lowest risk of dying, even compared to those who experienced little stress. Basically, the study revealed one becomes more vulnerable to premature death by being stressed about stress. Although the study revealed interesting results and had a large sample, it may not be completely trustworthy. The way the researchers operationalized their variables in terms of how they actually measured stress and risk of death was not mentioned. I was surprised at how she made it appear that this one study alone caused her to change the way she looked at stress for herself and for others. This lack of triangulation does not add credibility to her ideas. In addition, the large sample used in the study took place on people in the U.S., which shows the results are not completely generalizable. I think she should have searched for/mentioned other studies which could have supported the idea. Claiming that being stressed about being stressed increases the risk of premature death is a big thing to say and I think multiple supporting sources are needed before you can just preach something like that.

The second study she mentioned was a social stress test done at Harvard. Results showed that when participants viewed stress responses as helpful,  their blood vessels stayed relaxed and refrained from constricting. Again the way the researchers defined their variable was not mentioned. I think this study is more easily supported by scientific methods. I also liked this study because it indirectly showed how each and every one of us has self-control over our stress. I believe you only succumb to stress when you allow yourself to. The study showed that by not allowing yourself to view stress in such a negative way, you can in fact control the effects of stress on your body.

She discussed the way in which Oxytocin promotes a stress response which makes you feel the need to be surrounded by people who care about you. I do not completely agree with this. Based on personal experience and the experiences of others in my life, being stressed may make you purposely try to isolate yourself, especially if the stress comes from school. The final study she mentioned concluded that caring creates resilience, which ties in to the prior discussion about Oxytocin. Finally, when being interviewed after the talk, she stressed the importance of meaning in life decisions. She basically stated that meaning facilitates your trust in thinking you can handle stress. I agree with this because meaning plays a strong role in many psychological aspects, such as memory.