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FWIW, this however-many-th-generation European-American (i.e., "white") man had some authority issues while teaching an undergraduate course on personality psychology once upon a time in SoCal. I had just turned 28 at the time, so I still thought I could relate well enough to people less than a decade younger, but I was wrong. If there's one simple lesson about how to address students that I learned, it's to avoid giving them anything to object to. I guess I should've said "simplistic", because that's impossible; in sufficient numbers (I had a class of 220+), they will find something objectionable:

• I insisted I was not a professor, but a graduate instructor (single-quarter appointment, no PhD at the time, was still a grad student at that university), and actually got a comment in my evaluations from someone who thought I was shirking my responsibilities by denying the fact that I was a professor. Kids these days...
• I told them I wasn't a professor in so many ways, I thought that would produce complaints in itself. I used my first name wherever possible; probably only said my last name once. They still called me Professor Stauner. I think it's just habit—even they couldn'tve been that inattentive.
• I sometimes used emoticons to try to avoid the teacher = robot fallacy. Again, I was 28, a white dude, and the instructor, so I thought I could get away with it in my class. I even thought it might help me seem less intimidating, which I've sometimes gotten from others. Maybe it did...but one particular student just thought that was incredibly unprofessional, and that I should be forbidden from ever teaching anyone again in this life or any other. Clearly you can't win 'em all, much less control them.
• The course catalog was updated late, so someone signed up expecting Professor Funder, PhD instead of Graduate Instructor Nick, M.A. (at the time). This person felt the need to blame me for not being Professor Funder in his/her evaluation comment. I guess I can understand that; he's a pretty awesome lecturer...but I wasn't exactly chopped liver myself, even then.

To answer your question directly, I'd echo many others here in pointing to culture as an important factor, because IMHO, it mostly comes down to how your behaviors fulfill or defy expectations. Best practice probably is just to blend in until tenure, then play the game however you see fit (i.e., however is best for students' education, regarding which this is probably irrelevant). I'll echo this part too: choice of signature isn't going to solve authority problems, no way, no-how.

That being said, it's an interesting empirical question, and I'd love to see someone research it:

• Operationalize rude behavior as words or contiguous phrases in evaluation comment transcripts
• Code with multiple judges; 3–4 ought to suffice (calculate and report inter-rater reliability)
• Test for group differences using the signature factor you've described as an independent variable
• Supplement comment transcripts with counts of behavioral observations during class by TAs, if available, to make it a multivariate ANOVA
• Probably consult questions like this one on Cross Validated about how to handle the Poisson distributions of counts as dependent variables.

I'm sure some academic journal would want to publish those results, even if the effect is small.

FWIW, this however-many-th-generation European-American (i.e., "white") man had some authority issues while teaching an undergraduate course on personality psychology once upon a time in SoCal. I had just turned 28 at the time, so I still thought I could relate well enough to people less than a decade younger, but I was wrong. If there's one simple lesson about how to address students that I learned, it's to avoid giving them anything to object to. I guess I should've said "simplistic", because that's impossible; in sufficient numbers (I had a class of 220+), they will find something objectionable:

• I insisted I was not a professor, but a graduate instructor (single-quarter appointment, no PhD at the time, was still a grad student at that university), and actually got a comment in my evaluations from someone who thought I was shirking my responsibilities by denying the fact that I was a professor. Kids these days...
• I told them I wasn't a professor in so many ways, I thought that would produce complaints in itself. I used my first name wherever possible; probably only said my last name once. They still called me Professor Stauner. I think it's just habit—even they couldn'tve been that inattentive.
• I sometimes used emoticons to try to avoid the teacher = robot fallacy. Again, I was 28, a white dude, and the instructor, so I thought I could get away with it in my class. I even thought it might help me seem less intimidating, which I've sometimes gotten from others. Maybe it did...but one particular student just thought that was incredibly unprofessional, and that I should be forbidden from ever teaching anyone again in this life or any other. Clearly you can't win 'em all, much less control them.
• The course catalog was updated late, so someone signed up expecting Professor Funder, PhD instead of Graduate Instructor Nick, M.A. (at the time). This person felt the need to blame me for not being Professor Funder in his/her evaluation comment. I guess I can understand that; he's a pretty awesome lecturer...but I wasn't exactly chopped liver myself, even then.

To answer your question directly, I'd echo many others here in pointing to culture as an important factor, because IMHO, it mostly comes down to how your behaviors fulfill or defy expectations. Best practice probably is just to blend in until tenure, then play the game however you see fit (i.e., however is best for students' education, regarding which this is probably irrelevant). I'll echo this part too: choice of signature isn't going to solve authority problems, no way, no-how.

That being said, it's an interesting empirical question, and I'd love to see someone research it:

• Operationalize rude behavior as words or contiguous phrases in evaluation comment transcripts
• Code with multiple judges; 3–4 ought to suffice (calculate and report inter-rater reliability)
• Test for group differences using the signature factor you've described as an independent variable
• Supplement comment transcripts with counts of behavioral observations during class by TAs, if available, to make it a multivariate ANOVA
• Probably consult questions like this one on Cross Validated about how to handle the Poisson distributions of counts as dependent variables.

I'm sure some academic journal would want to publish those results, even if the effect is small.

FWIW, this however-many-th-generation European-American (i.e., "white") man had some authority issues while teaching an undergraduate course on personality psychology once upon a time in SoCal. I had just turned 28 at the time, so I still thought I could relate well enough to people less than a decade younger, but I was wrong. If there's one simple lesson about how to address students that I learned, it's to avoid giving them anything to object to. I guess I should've said "simplistic", because that's impossible; in sufficient numbers (I had a class of 220+), they will find something:

• I insisted I was not a professor, but a graduate instructor (single-quarter appointment, no PhD at the time, was still a grad student at that university), and actually got a comment in my evaluations from someone who thought I was shirking my responsibilities by denying the fact that I was a professor. Kids these days...
• I told them I wasn't a professor in so many ways, I thought that would produce complaints in itself. I used my first name wherever possible; probably only said my last name once. They still called me Professor Stauner. Frankly, I think it's just habit—even they couldn't have been that inattentive.
• I sometimes used emoticons to try to avoid the teacher = robot fallacy. Again, I was 28, a white dude, and the instructor, so I thought I could get away with it in my class. I even thought it might help me seem less intimidating, which I've sometimes gotten from others. Maybe it did...but one particular student just thought that was incredibly unprofessional, and that I should be forbidden from ever teaching anyone again in this life or any other. You can't win 'em all, obviously.
• The course catalog was updated late, so someone signed up expecting Professor Funder, PhD instead of Graduate Instructor Nick, M.A. (at the time). This person felt the need to blame me for not being Professor Funder in his/her evaluation comment. I guess I can understand that; he's a pretty awesome lecturer...but I wasn't exactly chopped liver myself, even before the degree.

To answer your question directly, I'd echo many others here in pointing to culture as an important factor, because IMHO, it mostly comes down to how your behaviors fulfill or defy expectations. Best practice probably is just to blend in until tenure, then play the game however you see fit (i.e., however is best for students' education). I'm just a voice in the choir at this point, but I'll say it anyway: choice of signature isn't going to solve authority problems, no way, no-how.

That being said, it's an interesting empirical question, and I'd love to see someone research it. E.g., operationalize rude, immature behavior as words or contiguous phrases in evaluation comment transcripts, code with multiple judges (calculate and report inter-rater reliability), and test for group differences using the signature factor you've described as an independent variable. Supplement comment transcripts with counts of behavioral observations during class by TAs, if available, to make it a multivariate ANOVA. Probably consult questions like this one on Cross Validated about how to handle the Poisson distributions of counts as dependent variables. I'm sure some academic journal would want to publish those results, even if the effect is small.

FWIW, this however-many-th-generation European-American (i.e., "white") man had some authority issues while teaching an undergraduate course on personality psychology once upon a time in SoCal. I had just turned 28 at the time, so I still thought I could relate well enough to people less than a decade younger, but I was wrong. If there's one simple lesson about how to address students that I learned, it's to avoid giving them anything to object to. I guess I should've said "simplistic", because that's impossible; in sufficient numbers (I had a class of 220+), they will find something objectionable:

• I insisted I was not a professor, but a graduate instructor (single-quarter appointment, no PhD at the time, was still a grad student at that university), and actually got a comment in my evaluations from someone who thought I was shirking my responsibilities by denying the fact that I was a professor. Kids these days...
• I told them I wasn't a professor in so many ways, I thought that would produce complaints in itself. I used my first name wherever possible; probably only said my last name once. They still called me Professor Stauner. I think it's just habit—even they couldn'tve been that inattentive.
• I sometimes used emoticons to try to avoid the teacher = robot fallacy. Again, I was 28, a white dude, and the instructor, so I thought I could get away with it in my class. I even thought it might help me seem less intimidating, which I've sometimes gotten from others. Maybe it did...but one particular student just thought that was incredibly unprofessional, and that I should be forbidden from ever teaching anyone again in this life or any other. Clearly you can't win 'em all, much less control them.
• The course catalog was updated late, so someone signed up expecting Professor Funder, PhD instead of Graduate Instructor Nick, M.A. (at the time). This person felt the need to blame me for not being Professor Funder in his/her evaluation comment. I guess I can understand that; he's a pretty awesome lecturer...but I wasn't exactly chopped liver myself, even then.

To answer your question directly, I'd echo many others here in pointing to culture as an important factor, because IMHO, it mostly comes down to how your behaviors fulfill or defy expectations. Best practice probably is just to blend in until tenure, then play the game however you see fit (i.e., however is best for students' education, regarding which this is probably irrelevant). I'll echo this part too: choice of signature isn't going to solve authority problems, no way, no-how.

That being said, it's an interesting empirical question, and I'd love to see someone research it:

• Operationalize rude behavior as words or contiguous phrases in evaluation comment transcripts
• Code with multiple judges; 3–4 ought to suffice (calculate and report inter-rater reliability)
• Test for group differences using the signature factor you've described as an independent variable
• Supplement comment transcripts with counts of behavioral observations during class by TAs, if available, to make it a multivariate ANOVA
• Probably consult questions like this one on Cross Validated about how to handle the Poisson distributions of counts as dependent variables.

I'm sure some academic journal would want to publish those results, even if the effect is small.

FWIW, this however-many-th-generation European-American (i.e., "white") man had some authority issues while teaching an undergraduate course on personality psychology once upon a time in SoCal. I had just turned 28 at the time, so I still thought I could relate well enough to people less than a decade younger, but I was wrong. If there's one simple lesson about how to address students that I learned, it's to avoid giving them anything to object to. I guess I should've said "simplistic", because that's impossible; in sufficient numbers (I had a class of 220+), they will find something:

• I insisted I was not a professor, but a graduate instructor (single-quarter appointment, no PhD at the time, was still a grad student at that university), and actually got a comment in my evaluations from someone who thought I was shirking my responsibilities by denying the fact that I was a professor. Kids these days...
• I told them I wasn't a professor in so many ways, I thought that would produce complaints in itself. I used my first name wherever possible; probably only said my last name once. They still called me Professor Stauner. Frankly, I think it's just habit—even they couldn't have been that inattentive.
• I sometimes used emoticons to try to avoid the teacher = robot fallacy. Again, I was 28, a white dude, and the instructor, so I thought I could get away with it in my class. I even thought it might help me seem less intimidating, which I've sometimes gotten from others. Maybe it did...but one particular student just thought that was incredibly unprofessional, and that I should be forbidden from ever teaching anyone again in this life or any other. You can't win 'em all, obviously.
• The course catalog was updated late, so someone signed up expecting Professor Funder, PhD instead of Graduate Instructor Nick, M.A. (at the time). This person felt the need to blame me for not being Professor Funder in his/her evaluation comment. I guess I can understand that; he's a pretty awesome lecturer...but I wasn't exactly chopped liver myself, even before the degree.

To answer your question directly, I'd echo many others here in pointing to culture as an important factor, because IMHO, it mostly comes down to how your behaviors fulfill or defy expectations. Best practice probably is just to blend in until tenure, then play the game however you see fit (i.e., however is best for students' education). I'm just a voice in the choir at this point, but I'll say it anyway: choice of signature isn't going to solve authority problems, no way, no-how.

That being said, it's an interesting empirical question, and I'd love to see someone research it. E.g., operationalize rude, immature behavior as words or contiguous phrases in evaluation comment transcripts, code with multiple judges (calculate and report inter-rater reliability), and test for group differences using the signature factor you've described as an independent variable. Supplement comment transcripts with counts of behavioral observations during class by TAs, if available, to make it a multivariate ANOVA. Probably consult questions like this one on Cross Validated about how to handle the Poisson distributions of counts as dependent variables. I'm sure some academic journal would want to publish those results.

FWIW, this however-many-th-generation European-American (i.e., "white") man had some authority issues while teaching an undergraduate course on personality psychology once upon a time in SoCal. I had just turned 28 at the time, so I still thought I could relate well enough to people less than a decade younger, but I was wrong. If there's one simple lesson about how to address students that I learned, it's to avoid giving them anything to object to. I guess I should've said "simplistic", because that's impossible; in sufficient numbers (I had a class of 220+), they will find something:

• I insisted I was not a professor, but a graduate instructor (single-quarter appointment, no PhD at the time, was still a grad student at that university), and actually got a comment in my evaluations from someone who thought I was shirking my responsibilities by denying the fact that I was a professor. Kids these days...
• I told them I wasn't a professor in so many ways, I thought that would produce complaints in itself. I used my first name wherever possible; probably only said my last name once. They still called me Professor Stauner. Frankly, I think it's just habit—even they couldn't have been that inattentive.
• I sometimes used emoticons to try to avoid the teacher = robot fallacy. Again, I was 28, a white dude, and the instructor, so I thought I could get away with it in my class. I even thought it might help me seem less intimidating, which I've sometimes gotten from others. Maybe it did...but one particular student just thought that was incredibly unprofessional, and that I should be forbidden from ever teaching anyone again in this life or any other. You can't win 'em all, obviously.
• The course catalog was updated late, so someone signed up expecting Professor Funder, PhD instead of Graduate Instructor Nick, M.A. (at the time). This person felt the need to blame me for not being Professor Funder in his/her evaluation comment. I guess I can understand that; he's a pretty awesome lecturer...but I wasn't exactly chopped liver myself, even before the degree.

To answer your question directly, I'd echo many others here in pointing to culture as an important factor, because IMHO, it mostly comes down to how your behaviors fulfill or defy expectations. Best practice probably is just to blend in until tenure, then play the game however you see fit (i.e., however is best for students' education). I'm just a voice in the choir at this point, but I'll say it anyway: choice of signature isn't going to solve authority problems, no way, no-how.

That being said, it's an interesting empirical question, and I'd love to see someone research it. E.g., operationalize rude, immature behavior as words or contiguous phrases in evaluation comment transcripts, code with multiple judges (calculate and report inter-rater reliability), and test for group differences using the signature factor you've described as an independent variable. Supplement comment transcripts with counts of behavioral observations during class by TAs, if available, to make it a multivariate ANOVA. Probably consult questions like this one on Cross Validated about how to handle the Poisson distributions of counts as dependent variables. I'm sure some academic journal would want to publish those results, even if the effect is small.