I am Always Late

Success is something that can be achieved by using own talents, skills, knowledge, luck, as well as by using a combination of many minor factors, and sometimes such factors are absolutely strange and seemingly unrelated. Actually, it is not something new that a person’s name can determine his or her destiny to a certain extent. However, could you ever imagine that the people with easy-to-say names have much higher chances to achieve professional or personal success in this life, be more healthy and wealthy, more well-thought-of, respected and reputable, as well as have lower risks of developing a nasty habit of being always late?

The findings of a study of Australian specialists from Melbourne University’s School of Psychological Sciences suggest that those people with tongue-twisters names have much tougher life and have to face much more problems of all sorts compared to those people who have easy-to-say names. Our names play a very important role in how we are perceived by the others, and if your name is Spencer, Benson or Sherman, you will be judged much more positively than those people whose names are hard to pronounce. At that, specialists are convinced that the folks with easy-to-say names are usually receiving special treatments from teachers, more promotions from their employers at work, and so on.

“The effect is not due merely to the length of a name, or how foreign-sounding or unusual it is, but rather how easy it is to pronounce,” Dr Simon Laham, a leader of the study and an expert from Melbourne University’s School of Psychological Sciences, commented on the findings of his expert team. During the study, the specialists looked at the names and their professional or personal achievements. It turned out that those with surnames like O’Sallivan or Morten were ranked among the easiest and the most “successful” for their owners. The names of foreign origin like Loughnane, Farquharson, or Katorjevskiy, found the place among the hardest names to pronounce, thus being less positively taken.

The experts pointed on the fact that those people with difficult to pronounce names reported about their getting very stressed and dejected when the people around them fail or do not spend efforts for pronouncing or spelling their names in a correct manner. A great deal of people with foreign origin who come to or reside in other countries, are very well familiar with this kind of problem. Having not an easy-to-say name sometimes results in emotional problems, a lack of professional success and self-esteem, depression, sadness, and – being always late. Read more about the findings of this interesting study in the latest issue of the online Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

A great deal of modern people suffer from chronic lateness, and the impact of this bad habit on those around them is sometimes really huge. There is a great deal of reasons for being always late, including poor time management skills, procrastination, laziness, a lack of motivation, increased egoism, and many more. At that, many of us suffer from such a problem as inability to find things, thus spending too much time for searching out and, as a consequence, being late. Is in common for you to spend a half of an hour every morning to look for your keys, bag, papers, hat, or gloves? Do your endless searches cause you being late all the time? Do you want to know what can you do in order to make your daily searches more effective and less time consuming? Go on reading.

A group of scientists at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, led by Grayden Solman, carried out a series of experiments by using a specially designed computer software. The participants were offered to look for a definite shape among the pile of shapes, and find it as soon as possible. While searching process was on, special device was monitoring the brain activity of the participants, and it became apparent that in 10-20 per cent of situations the participants were simply missing the object they were supposed to find. It seemed like for some certain time, the participants were forgetting about the target. What could cause that?

The scientists tried to figure out what’s going on by using several strategies. They tried to increase the memory load of the participants and started offering them a certain memory work prior to starting the search exercise. However, this did not cause any effect on the search test results. The same happened when the search experiments were interrupted with various factors in order to kill concentration on the participants.

Finally, the specialists used a very interesting analysis: they analyzed mouse movements of the participants during their search exercise, and it turned out that  when the object is found and missed, mouse movements considerably slow down. Therefore, a theory was proposed that the brain part that is dealing with movement, run very fast and visual system can not keep up with its activities. Therefore, if you are commonly looking for something and are short of time, it is recommended to use slower movements in order to give your visual system some time for working properly. This will help you find things faster and avoid chronic lateness. Also, slowed down movements of the mouse suggested that the participants’ brain was actually aware about missing the target, so the brain tries to slow down the movements and make visual system work better.