In my field at least the title isn’t even used in most academic settings. I’ve been to dozens of scientific conferences and seen hundreds of talks, and I don’t recall anyone having been introduced as “Dr.” So-and-so. Maybe it’s different in other disciplines, but the only places I can think of where titles get used is on the staff listings of university websites, and in spam from shady publishers and conference hosts.
I think it would be appropriate to expect to be called “Dr.-” if the following conditions are met:
- You have claim to the title and either have a doctorate or are a medical “doctor”
- You are in a setting where titles (Mr., Mrs., etc.) are being used or are expected
- The person addressing you knows your title, or are otherwise in a position where they ought to know it (e.g. is a patient, employee, or colleague in a professional setting)
The fact is, in some cultures, such as Germany, it is common to use titles and honorifics and is considered rude and uncivilized not to do so, whereas in places like the U.S., it’s more common to go by the first name, and is often considered pompous to use titles… At the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter. There’s certainly no reason to be offended, unless some disrespect was intentional, and even then, it’s better to be the bigger person, which is hopefully a side-effect of education.
Paging Dr. Zombie.
I suspect I can go both ways with this:
First example: a few months ago, I was talking about a well-known author online with a fellow who actually knew him, and referred to him in the conversation as ‘Mr. (name)’ and was corrected by this person with ‘Dr. (name)’. While I appreciate that having a doctorate (in this case, Psychology, although his career is not in the medical field) would technically allow you in legal terms to call yourself ‘Doctor’, I nonetheless found this person’s correction to be a bit pretentious and the author may not have liked being spoken for.
Second example: I know a father and son, the son a longtime friend in my age range who I knew before meeting his Da (and long before his son pursued post-secondary education), and the father a more recent but no less good a friend, who both have academic doctorates in the sciences, and neither of them have ever expected me to refer to them or call them ‘Doctor (name)’. I asked my friend what he thought of the first example above a couple of weeks after it happened, and he responded by saying that he much prefers to be called by his first name by me, being a good friend, and similarly his father much prefers me to address him by his first name (or Mr. (name), which he leaves up to me).
I don’t see it as excessive pretense to call yourself a ‘Doctor’ if you’ve put in the effort and work (not to mention financial investment, or heavy debt to be paid off) to get to that finish line thus, but I think if it’s just a way to put yourself up a few ladder rungs in a social or non-academic business situation, or to beef up your written name’s ‘street creds’, I would not be likely to refer to someone as ‘Doctor’ unless their choice of profession was in medicine in some way.
-SG.
Can zombies even get Ph.D.s?
Yes, they get credit for death experience.
Ugghhh - NEVER! I’m a Ph.D. and I cringe when called “doctor” by anyone other than students.
The only time I’ve corrected someone in the “outside world” was when I was in the ER and an M.D. was being an exceptionally egocentric asshat. He dialed back the nastiness when I told him what to call me.
Just yesterday I developed a 2-month late curiousness about that Apple commercial that aired so much during the Olympics, featuring a poem about the unity of humanity being read by a sage black-sounding person, so I googled it. Turns out it was Maya Angelou, who, I hadn’t known, died 2 years ago. So I looked over the Wikipedia article about Angelou, and learned she preferred to be called “Dr. Angelou,” despite not even having a bachelor’s degree.
I don’t have a PhD or MD but I don’t even like people using Mr. If someone calls me “Mr. Nomad”, I have to correct them… my dad was “Mr. Nomad”. I’m just Desert.
When I received my Master’s degree, I tried to get my wife to call me Master. It was an epic fail.
My father was (is still, I guess) a PhD of biochemistry and the only time that he was referred to as “Doctor” was at the university where he taught.
I tell young people to call me by my first name. Older people often seem to prefer to use the term Doctor.
Yep, this turned out to be true. If you’re an undergrad where I’m teaching, I’m Dr. Nerd. To everyone else, I’m Eng.
This is, at best, tangentially related. But when I was in nursing school, it really got on my tits that the instructors insisted on being called “Mrs” (all were female). Never in my college experience had instructors wanted us to call them anything but their first names. But come nursing school, they’re all special flowers who are above us mere peons.
I was in my early 30s at that time, and I’d say a good 2/3 of my classmates were even older than that; nursing is a change-of-career for a LOT of people. In other words, we weren’t kids fresh out of high school. We had degrees and careers and life experience. Some of us were even older than the instructors.
After 10 years in the field, I get that nurses have to struggle for respect. We are medical professionals charged with keeping you and your loved ones alive; we are not Jello-O dispensers. I would expect the nurses charged with bringing up the next “generation” of nurses to foster a sense of camaraderie and solidarity, not a ridiculous “I’m better than you” attitude.
Did you go to nursing school at the same institution where you got your undergraduate degree? Because this tends to be very specific to institutional culture; there are colleges where first names are standard, and colleges where it would be virtually unthinkable for a student to call an instructor by their first name (except perhaps in fine and performing arts disciplines, where the unwritten rules tend to be different). Also, many instructors actually find it MORE important to maintain the social distance created by the use of titles if they are working with students who are the same age or older than they are; it isn’t about being a “special flower” or having an “I’m better than you” attitude, but it IS about making it clear that this is a professional relationship where one person has the authority to give instruction and dispense grades. (Quite often, if you let those lines get blurred, it can lead to problems down the line, of the “I thought we were friends, why did you give me a C?” variety.)
I have a PhD, but I never asked anyone to call me Doctor. I only got keen on the title for a couple of months after I got it - doctor fever? - but stuck strictly to putting it in any form I had to fill, any online account, and so on. I managed to get called “Dr Aruns” a couple of times in the bank when negotiating my mortgage, and that gave me a little thrill, but that was it.
I still work in Newcastle Uni, and hung around other universities in the past and I have to say that here in UK there are few places where people get less hung up on titles. We’re more or less all on first names from day one, including the High And Mighty Head of School, the Directors of Research and of Teaching and other important folks.
Posher places, like Oxford and St Andrews might be different.
I hardly even hear it in my professional setting. Only rarely, usually at the insistence of my wife, do I ever even acknowledge or indicate I’m a Dr.
Once at the airline ticket counter, the lady handed me my ticket and said “Have a nice flight Dr. Sigene.” I was a bit taken aback. I still don’t know for sure how she knew.
Interesting. At the university I went to, teachers were always called Mr., Mrs. or Dr., not by their first name. Or, at least that was the case until we were seniors taking the very last courses in our major, then it seemed that first names became somewhat common. It would have been unthinkable for a freshman or sophomore to call a teacher by his/her first name. I suppose it does vary a lot by institution.