Comments on: Dangerous words

By: Elian

Elian — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 08:42:19 +0000

Spending a week pondering a laundry detergent has its good side. If each person spent time thinking about the materials in their ordinary items, where they came from, how safe they are, what organic alternatives there are.. you get the picture… we would have a more informed and smarter consumer and probably more corporate responsibility — of necessity to their profits.
This test, as with so many others, seems to also be about something else, e.g.: trust. We are told that one term is more dangerous than the other, so one has to choose something-what if each were equally dangerous/innocuous? In fact they are both dangerous because they take advantage of people trusting that statements from “researchers” have validity on the face of it. Why not use actual chemical names-there is no lack of them-then see which one is more dangerous in perception and if that corresponds to fact. That seems to me a more significant test.

By: Danielle

Danielle — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 09:13:52 +0000

I’ve actually never thought about this in that way. I actually did think hnegripitrom sounded more dangerous, just because it’s more difficult to pronounce.

Like, my family always uses Tylenol whenever one of us is feeling sick. But if they were to tell me to take acetaminophen, I would automatically assume it was a dangerous thing to take and would refuse, even though it would help me get better.

I kind of like how that works.

By: Bo Lasquis

Bo Lasquis — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:47:46 +0000

In other words, familiarity breeds contempt.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 09:21:53 +0000

@patrick: Apart from the chicken killicide, the bit that made me laugh most was the idea of “poping up”.

> Yes the “killicide” is a fanciful invention of mine (though google
> reveals it’s been poping up for years too!)

By: israeliwriter

israeliwriter — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 19:12:43 +0000

Responding to Patrick’s response to @Weak about the study not working in its current form if conducted in a different language:
At one point, psychologists and sociologists discovered that their golden rule tell-all the IQ test was, in fact, was significantly framed by the middle to upper class WASP from which it was produced. Many indicators of low IQ had much more to do with cultural unfamiliarity than with actual limited intelligence.