Two researchers at Cornell University report that people are more likely to refer to men by surname only (last name) than women. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Stav Atir and Melissa Ferguson suggest that such labeling may lead to unintentional bias.

During the last presidential race in the U.S., the candidates from both major parties were given one-name monikers—doing so made referencing them easier. But notably, Hillary Clinton was called Hillary, while Donald Trump was called Trump. Why the difference? The researchers with this new effort wondered why as well, prompting them to look into the prevalence of men being referenced by surname versus women.

Their study consisted of analyzing online reviews students gave for their professors and transcripts of political radio shows. They also asked volunteers to rewrite information from a blurb describing a fictional chemist.

In all, the researchers looked at 5,000 professor reviews and more than 300 radio show transcripts counting the number of times a person was referenced by either their full name, or just their last name. They found that students were 55.9 percent more likely to refer to male professors by just their last name, compared to female professors. They also found that speakers on NPR political radio shows were twice as likely to do so. Intrigued, the researchers conducted an experiment in which they wrote an essay about a fictional chemist named either Douglas or Dolores Berson. They then gave the essays to 184 volunteers and asked them to rewrite it in their own words. Those asked to paraphrase the essay about Douglas were four times more likely to refer to him by his last name than were those writing about Dolores.

The researchers conducted several other experiments aimed at trying to figure out why such differences exist—they found that volunteers felt that people referred to by just their last name were considered to be better known or more eminent than those referred to by both first and last name. They were not able to find any real reason that people seem more inclined to refer to men by their last names than women, but suggest it might indicate that a subtle form of bias exists in people's minds.

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