Does a Rose by any other Name Smell as Sweet? A Cognitive Perspective on Poets and Poetry

Evidence, both anecdotal and scientific, suggests that people treat (or are affected by) products of prestigious sources differently than those of less prestigious or anonymous sources. The "products" which are the focus of the present study are poems, and the "sources" are the poets. We explore the manner in which the poet's name affects the experience of reading a poem. Study 1 shows that a poet's reputation has a major effect on the evaluation of a poem, whereas the poem's quality is hardly discernible to lay readers. Study 2 asks whether the poet's name affects only the reader's reported evaluation (as in The Emperor's New Clothes) or is sincere. Since we conclude it is, Study 3 explores how a poet's name alters the experience of the poem. In the absence of objective criteria for measuring "true poetic experience", we propose some indirect methodological paradigms for addressing this question.