Nine-year-old Catalina Love-Kortz smiles Tuesday afternoon at her parents’ home in Santa Fe while going over a poster detailing her recent science fair project. The fourth grader at La Mariposa Montessori School won first place for her social science experiment, which observed the difference in manners of people in coffee shops depending on their age and gender. Catalina found younger men had the highest rate of saying both “please” and “thank you” while ordering and older men had the highest rate of saying neither.
Catalina Love-Kortz, 9, plays a beat on her drum set Tuesday afternoon in her parents' garage in Santa Fe. Catalina, on top of winning first place in her school science fair, is the drummer of a local hip-hop girl group called Miss Behavior and the Treblemakers.
Nine-year-old Catalina Love-Kortz holds up the first-place ribbon she received for winning her school science fair with her study of customers’ manners in two coffee shops in Santa Fe.
A close-up of the purpose and question section on Catalina Love-Kortz’ poster board from her study into customers’ manners at two local coffee shops. The fourth grader said she hopes her study, which won first place at a La Mariposa Montessori School science fair, leads people to get “better manners because it is a way of showing respect and kindness.”
Nine-year-old Catalina Love-Kortz smiles Tuesday afternoon at her parents’ home in Santa Fe while going over a poster detailing her recent science fair project. The fourth grader at La Mariposa Montessori School won first place for her social science experiment, which observed the difference in manners of people in coffee shops depending on their age and gender. Catalina found younger men had the highest rate of saying both “please” and “thank you” while ordering and older men had the highest rate of saying neither.
A close-up of the purpose and question section on Catalina Love-Kortz’ poster board from her study into customers’ manners at two local coffee shops. The fourth grader said she hopes her study, which won first place at a La Mariposa Montessori School science fair, leads people to get “better manners because it is a way of showing respect and kindness.”
Catalina Love-Kortz, a fourth grader at La Mariposa Montessori School, is many things: a jiu-jitsu enthusiast; a drummer, singer and pianist; a primary member of local hip-hop garage band girl group Miss Behavior and the Treblemakers.
When she grows up, she wants to be a songwriter or maybe a lawyer.
In the meantime, Catalina, 9, is a budding social scientist and has an interest in geography — she likes learning about other cultures and how people in other places live.
For a recent class science fair project, she chose to conduct a social science experiment, which, she explained, is different from a hard science experiment, such as watching an eggshell dissolve in an acidic bath of vinegar. Instead of examining chemical reactions or the compounds present in organic matter, she opted to study people and how they interact with one another.
Catalina’s project revealed some troubling findings: Grown-ups’ manners aren’t as good as you might hope.
Her work began with field observations of human subjects and their behaviors in two Santa Fe coffee shops, one primarily frequented by tourists and the other more of a local joint.
She stood within earshot of the cash register and listened to a total of 85 people order coffee at the two shops, marking down whether each customer said “please,” “thank you,” both or neither while requesting their order.
The prevalence of please and thank you is something Catalina and her family often notice, said Lily Love, Catalina’s mother, who provided some logistical support for the project by transporting Catalina to the coffee shops, purchasing the requisite poster board and helping her compile some charts.
“We both always notice that,” Love said. “When we’re traveling or at the airport or getting coffee, just listening to people not say ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ I was like, ‘How bad is this problem?’ And she really got all that information.”
Catalina Love-Kortz, 9, plays a beat on her drum set Tuesday afternoon in her parents' garage in Santa Fe. Catalina, on top of winning first place in her school science fair, is the drummer of a local hip-hop girl group called Miss Behavior and the Treblemakers.
Ultimately, Catalina’s data showed that most often — in more than 40% of instances — adults said neither “please” nor “thank you” while ordering. Instead, typical orders involved phrases like “I want” or “give me.”
She also disaggregated her data by gender and age. Younger men, Catalina determined, had the highest rate of saying “please” or “thank you.” Older men, meanwhile, had the highest occurrence of mannerless behavior, with more than 50% saying neither “please” nor “thank you” to their baristas.
“I found out that young men have the best manners. Old men have the worst manners. Old ladies had the second to best; young ladies had second to worst,” Catalina summarized.
These findings surprised Catalina. After her background research indicated young women tend to be most polite and boys around her age tend to have more behavioral issues than girls, she hypothesized young women would say “please” and “thank you” most consistently. But the group’s third-place rank showed otherwise.
Nine-year-old Catalina Love-Kortz holds up the first-place ribbon she received for winning her school science fair with her study of customers’ manners in two coffee shops in Santa Fe.
The findings around age were also a surprise, Love added. She had expected older people to adhere more strictly to proper etiquette.
“As parents and grown-ups, we’re always telling kids, ‘You should have good manners. Say please. Say thank you.’ But then, we’re not so good at it ourselves,” Love said.
The science fair’s judges were surprised by Catalina’s findings, too — they awarded her work first place. The judges presented Catalina with a blue ribbon in front of the whole class, an experience she said was unexpected, exciting and embarrassing all at the same time.
For Catalina, the project is a cautionary reminder to mind your manners, to say both “please” and “thank you” next time you’re putting in a coffee order.
“I hope everybody gets better manners because it is a way of showing respect and kindness,” she said. “Not only is it nicer to the people they say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to, but it also makes the person who said it feel better, too.”
