I work at CEA , where I provide support to city/national groups worldwide :)
Previously, I worked at EA Netherlands and the Happier Lives Institute. Before that, I obtained a master’s in Methodology & Statistics in Psychology (and ran PISE alongside that).
Always happy to chat about anything psychology, community building or methodology. If you’d like to talk to me for whatever reason (serendipity!), feel welcome to schedule a call here :)
Hey David_Moss :) It would indeed be very interesting to do this and get some insights into how different names are perceived by students! I think this would be especially useful if we could identify which names are most appealing to ‘proto-EAs’. Otherwise I’m not sure how useful this type of study in itself is to actually find out which name result in most HEAs, as—at least in our experience—a broadly appealing name may not necessarily translate into finding more EAs. For example, when we asked friends for feedback in the brainstorm phase of our name change, ‘PISE’ received more positive reactions than ‘EA’. Yet most people who stayed with our group (and didn’t drop out of fellowships/committees or otherwise become inactive) actually prefered EA or were neutral. A potential explanation for this is that the additional people that a more popular name attracts are actually often people who wouldn’t be interested in EA in the long run (and that casting our net wide doesn’t always translate into more success further down the line). I’m not sure if an online experiment would pick up on who (are likely to) actually become EAs, but if we could relate name preferences to proto-EA characteristics we may be able to capture that.