Dr. Eagleson's Argument Analysis

Elaine Pedreira Rabinovich of Sáo Paulo University spearheaded a social psychology study in an attempt to delve deeper into the earlier research conducted in the 1940’s by Dr. Eagleson. Her hypothesis suggested that the socioeconomic group of a child’s parent would affect the name chosen for that child (Rabinovich, 1993). The theory is an interesting one, yet it is faulty. The argument presented is inductive, albeit a weak and uncogent inductive argument. There are several key issues with this study. The evidence presented in support of the comparative claim to socioeconomic groups and children’s names is flawed, at best. A child’s name is not necessarily related to his or her parents’ socioeconomic group. The premises given in the article
The first of these is the variation between the groups. The study divided the two groups into fifty, but there are differences that cause the groups not to parallel. The first of these is the variation on the split of the children in the study. A group made an even half between boys and girls with 25 each; meanwhile, Group B was slightly incongruent to this method. There were 28 boys and 22 girls. This may not seem like a massive issue, but when the sample size is as small as it is and makes the level of claim that it does, it is a big deal. This causes the scale to tip when statistics are being drawn concerning boys’ names. Another issue is the age variation between the studies. The children in Group A ranged from 1 to 7 years old, and the children in Group B varied drastically less with participants being 1 month to 1 year old (Rabinovoch, 1993). This ever so slightly dates the information given by Group A. If there were multiple siblings between the child in the survey and the time of the survey, information on the why the parents chose a name could have been confused or clouded with time. Perhaps the greatest problem with this study is the lack of expounding upon definitions of words. The study concluded that parents who chose their child’s name together (those from Group A) reflect an egalitarian system, and those families where only one parent chose the child’s name (Group B) were part of a hierarchical system. The question behind this is what exactly determines a family is egalitarian or hierarchical? Could any of the parents been single parents who selected the name alone? Absolutely. Definitions played a further role when the terms “aesthetic” and “neutral-sounding” are called into question. What constitutes a name as being “short,” “nice,” or “easy”? Is Robert a neutral sounding name, chosen because it can be shortened to Bob? Perhaps it is imaginative, as the parents did not know anyone with that