"People misinterpret email tone about 56% of the time"
~ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
This is in response to the recent flame wars in this BBS (Windsor8). I'm sure a lot of it was just misunderstanding and miscommunication. Let's all try to read the posts in a neutral, objective manner, don't let our mood and stereotypes influence our interpretation. I can't stress this enough "What You Type Isn't Always What Others Read", good intensions can be misinterpreted so don't get upset, get CLARITY and fix the misunderstanding by questioning each other before attacking! Read the following summary of a psychology research to get a better understanding:
People only ascertain the intended tone on an e-mail message about 56% of the time, not much better than chance, according to a study led by Prof. Nicholas Epley (University of Chicago) and Prof. Justin Kruger (New York University). The research also found that people think they've correctly interpreted the tone 90% of the time.
Epley and Kruger discovered that not only were the receivers of the e-mails overconfident about their understanding of the message's tone, but the senders were as well. About 78% of the senders thought that the receiver would correctly interpret the tone of their e-mail message.
Epley explained that "People in our study were convinced they've accurately understood the tone of an e-mail message when in fact their odds are no better than chance."
He observed that "people often think the tone or emotion in their messages is obvious because they 'hear' the tone they intend in their head as they write." Kruger likened this to findings from previous research by Elizabeth Newton that people vastly overestimated their ability to convey a tune by tapping out its rhythm. "It's impossible not to hear the song as you're tapping away," he said. "So you have a hard time separating yourself from your own perspective and realizing how impoverished the listeners' data really are."
Epley stated that similar
misunderstandings of emotional tone play a major role in starting online flame wars.
Original Source:
When What You Type Isn't What They Read: The Perseverance of Stereotypes and Expectancies over E-Mail." Nicholas Epley and Justin Kruger; Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2005, 41(4), pp. 414.
Summary Source: Wikinews
[
本帖最后由 Phi_Nono 于 2007-2-21 21:02 编辑 ]
