Would more
residents of New Orleans have evacuated ahead of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 if
it had been named Kurt? A published
study suggests they would have, perhaps reducing Katrina's death toll of more
than 1,800.
Because people unconsciously think a
storm with a female name is less dangerous than one with a masculine name,
those in its path are less likely to flee, and are therefore more vulnerable to
harm. As a result, strong Atlantic
hurricanes with the most feminine names caused an estimated five times more
deaths than those with the most masculine names, researchers at the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign wrote in Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences.
When the National Hurricane Center
began giving storms human names in 1953 with Alice, it used only women's. The
first "male" Atlantic hurricane was Bob, in 1979. Hurricane names currently alternate between
male and female. Among those the World Meteorological Organization has chosen
for 2014: Dolly, Josephine, and Vicky.
Based on the analysis of Atlantic
hurricanes from 1950 to 2012, when 94 made landfall, the researchers found that
names of less severe storms didn't matter. Whether people took precautions or
not, the death toll was minimal and no different for male and female names. But for strong hurricanes, the more feminine
the name - as ranked by volunteers on an 11-point scale - the more people it
killed.
When judging a storm's threat, people
"appear to be applying their beliefs about how men and women behave,"
said co-author Sharon Shavitt, a professor of marketing at Illinois. "This
makes a female-named hurricane, especially one with a very feminine name such
as Belle or Cindy, seem gentler and less violent."
A spokesman for the National Hurricane
Center declined to say whether scientists there find this analysis credible.
But "whether the name is Sam or Samantha," Dennis Feltgen said,
people must heed evacuation orders.
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