Legibilus

  Across history, there have been numerous examples of hierarchy in society. In India, there was the caste system with five different levels of social status, in Korea there has been a divide between the “royals” and the “commoners,” and with the feudal system, there was a divide between the landlords and the farmers. Do you think such a hierarchy still exists? What do you think is the modern version of a social hierarchy? Today I would like to share some of my thoughts regarding the divide in social status nowadays, focusing on what I have observed throughout my life.  Before I start with the examples, I would like to start off with my conclusion. The criteria that determines social hierarchy should be something visible and something that is different for everyone. That is to say, one should be able to easily tell which hierarchy an individual fits through some sort of an indication, whether that be appearance, model of the car, or a report card. Therefore, I think that while...

     Few years ago, Harvard Business School conducted a very interesting research called Heidi Roizen Case Study. In a Harvard classroom, students were randomly split into two groups and given an identical text. The text was a case study about a real-life entrepreneur who became a very successful venture capitalist. However, there was one difference between the two groups' texts: the name of the entrepreneur. Group A received a text that talks about a guy named Howard and group B read a text about a lady named Heidi. This was the only difference between two texts. After reading the given text, students were asked about how they felt about this entrepreneur and his/her personality.      The result was astonishing: although the one and only difference between the two texts was a name--Heidi, which is evidently a woman's name, and Howard, a typical man's name--only Heidi received numerous emotional attacks such as 'She must be selfish', 'She looks like a type ...