New Study Shows Female-Named Hurricanes Are More Deadly

Bogey Wells11 years ago

Women are naturally a lot less threatening than men. Who would you rather confront, Chad or Emily? First of all, fuck Chads. Those guys suck. Secondly, while it isn’t the socially acceptable decision, Emily is easily the less intimidating of the two.

But what if I told you Chad is the president of the local Pokémon club and Emily is a world champion boxer? Tough shit. You’ve already underestimated your opponent.

A new study shows that the same thing happens with hurricanes. After studying the 47 most destructive hurricanes spanning the past six decades, researchers have concluded that people simply aren’t afraid of storms with traditionally female names. While the male-named hurricanes killed an average of 23 people, the female-named storms were nearly twice as deadly, resulting in an average of 45 deaths per storm.

According to the study, simply changing a hurricane’s name from a male name to a female name could very likely triple its death toll.

From the Washington Post:

“[Our] model suggests that changing a severe hurricane’s name from Charley … to Eloise … could nearly triple its death toll.”

To further prove that no one takes women seriously, researchers conducted several tests on the theory.

To test the hypothesis the gender of the storm names impacts people’s judgments about a storm, the researchers set up 6 experiments presenting a series of questions to between 100 to 346 people. The sexism showed up again.

Respondents predicted male hurricanes to be more intense the female hurricanes in one exercise. In another exercise, the hurricane sex affected how respondents said they would prepare for a hurricane.

“People imagining a ‘female’ hurricane were not as willing to seek shelter,” Shavitt said. “The stereotypes that underlie these judgments are subtle and not necessarily hostile toward women – they may involve viewing women as warmer and less aggressive than men.”

Not taking females seriously, regardless of whether they’re human or not. It’s a TFM.

[via Washington Post]

Image via University Corporation for Atmospheric Research