Random Research Challenge #4: Do the Rainbow High fashion dolls make sense?
Please take a look at the list of names below and see if you associate any of the names with a colour:
- Ruby Anderson
- Jade Hunter
- Violet Willow
- Skyler Bradshaw
- Sunny Madison
- Poppy Rowan
- Pixie Rose
- Bella Parker
On the weekend, my friend’s 7 year old daughter challenged me to guess all the rainbow colours of the Rainbow High fashion dolls based on their names alone. I hadn’t heard of these dolls because, according to her, I'm “an old person.” Anyway, unacceptable ageism aside, I got 6/8 (75%) answers right.
I was interested in finding out whether anyone else might score higher or if the mistakes I made were normal. I sent texts to five friends and asked them to take part in this challenge. Results are below:
[Name - correct answer - % people guessing correctly]
- Ruby Anderson - red - 100%
- Jade Hunter - green - 100%
- Violet Willow - violet - 100%
- Skyler Bradshaw - blue - 100%
- Sunny Madison - yellow - 80%
- Poppy Rowan - orange - 20% (red was the most common mistake although people recognised it was unlikely because they had already assigned red to Ruby Anderson)
- Pixie Rose- pink - 20%
- Bella Parker - baby pink - 0% (everyone, including me, guessed incorrectly but no two people gave the same wrong answer).
There are a number of methodological and sampling issues with how I handled this study. If I had the time and more friends, I would investigate whether the results would change depending on how I presented these names - if I presented them separately rather than together in one list, and if I changed the order. However, I do not have time and I ran out of friends back in 2003. The friends I do have are in their 30’s and not the target audience for the Rainbow High fashion dolls. Maybe the makers of the Rainbow High fashion dolls don’t intend for the names to correspond with certain colours. Baby pink isn’t even a colour of the rainbow - where is indigo? The whole thing raises more questions than it answers.