Avoid Email Miscommunication

Woman emailing
[Photo by larskflem]
The tone of an email is incredibly easy to misinterpret, explains emotional intelligence expert Daniel Goleman, writing in the New York Times. The main problem is there is no channel to convey our emotion - other than emoticons which are notoriously crude.

We've all done it: written something that's meant to be a joke in an email and then received a cold response when the message is misunderstood. Or received an email we can't make head nor tail of. Is this a joke or are they being serious?

Causes of miscommunication


Common email misperceptions include:
  • Positive emails are reinterpreted as neutral while neutral emails become negative.
  • Recipients rate jokes as less funny than the person who sent them.
  • Emailers overestimate how effectively they can communicate feelings.
  • Recipients also overestimate how well they can understand feelings.
  • Small initial differences between email correspondents can easily grow, sometimes causing the breakdown of relationships.

The cause of these misperceptions is the gap between how we feel when we are writing and the ambiguous meaning of the actual words on the screen. As we are writing we 'hear' the emotional content of an email, but forget there's no way to telepathically send this emotional content to the recipient. Researchers suggest we do this because people are naturally egocentric, we assume that others understand how we are feeling when often they don't.

Avoiding miscommunication


The solutions are pretty simple, but that doesn't make them any less important:
  • We're less likely to misunderstand someone we know well. If you need to be on someone's wavelength, get to know them face-to-face or on the phone. This can create a buffer of good feeling, then email exchanges will be smoother.
  • Think about emails from the recipients perspective.
  • Take time to write an effective email. Because of the medium it's easy to knock out short messages that can be interpreted as rude.

Is email dying?


Perhaps these problems will soon be a thing of the past as younger generations adopt newer communication technologies. US studies of teen internet habits (PDF, 468K) are starting to show a clear preference for instant messaging and text messaging. The bad news is that many youngsters see email as 'for old people'.

Of course reports of email's demise are seriously mistaken. But it's useful to remember that when emailing anyone under the age of 25, there's a good chance of a catastrophic communication failure - they might simply never read it.

» The psychology of email.

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Which Type of Emailer Are You?

Does your email inbox stress you out? Does "You've got mail" mean "You've got stress"? Or are you more laid back about email? Do you see it simply as a way to make your life easier?

Hair, Renaud and Ramsay (2007) investigated the different ways that people react to email. After administering some questionnaires, they came up with three types of emailers:
  1. The relaxed emailer. If you fall into this category then chances are you see email as something you will deal with as and when you have time. You don't try to respond to emails almost instantaneously. You expect others to be relaxed about email as well.
  2. The driven emailer. For you email must be replied to immediately. You see it as more like an ongoing conversation. Responding quickly is important for you.
  3. The stressed emailer. For you email is just a source of stress and you don't see it as that useful. You feel the pressure to respond.

Seems about right, although I'd be interested to know how many people fit into each of these categories. So, let's do a straw poll, please vote below:



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Frown and the Net Frowns With You, But Smile and You Smile Alone

Frown
[Photo by / M /]
That's according to a study which assessed the effects of smileys :) and frownies :( as I'm now calling them. Walther and D'Addario (2001) found that while smileys had no effect on the way a message was interpreted, frowns did reduce the positivity of positive messages. Overall, though, the effect of emoticons was relatively small.

These results don't seem to tie up with a study I reported recently about the effects of emoticons and capitalisation on how email is perceived which did find a positive effect for smileys. But this study used different measures along with taking into account personality variables. Plus it compared a smiley emoticon with no emoticon, rather than with a frowny emoticon as did Walther and D'Addario (2001).


Time of day and delay
But emoticons and capitalisation are not the only nonverbal cues that have been studied in 'computer mediated communication'. Time of day and delay before replying are two key nonverbal cues in email.

Walther and Tidwell (1995) looked at both of these. Work emails sent at night received the higher ratings for dominance when compared with the same email sent during the day. The opposite was seen for social emails, where more dominance was attributed to emails sent during the day.

Looking at the delay in replying to emails, affection towards work email replies was highest when quick during the day, while lowest when they were quick at night. The reverse findings were seen for social messages with quick replies at night attracting the most affection.


Avatars
A few studies have also examined choice of avatars. These are images people chose to represent themselves in online chat or in online games. Contrary to expectations, one study found that generally the more abstract and less human-like an avatar was, the more likely it was to provoke interest (Nowak & Biocca, 2003).

Another study has found that when avatars with facial expressions are used, these are communicated to humans, although only to a limited extent (Ku et al., 2005).


Masters of meaning
All this research shows it's amazing how much we can infer from so little information. You'd be forgiven for thinking that nonverbal behaviour in emails or instant messaging or even avatar choice was non-existent, and what there was didn't make much difference. But this research just goes to show humans are masters at squeezing every last ounce of meaning from everything we're presented with, even it's only a colon followed by a left bracket.

» This post is part of a series on nonverbal behaviour.

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How do Emoticons and Capitalisation Affect Perception of Email?

Emoticon Person
[Photo by Violator3]
Compared with face-to-face communication, nonverbal cues in email are lacking. But humans are fabulous at generating meaning even when cues are sparse. Psychologists have theorised our motivation for generating meaning is reducing levels of uncertainty and helping predict other people's behaviour. This might explain how, in emails, even two simple things like capitalisation and emoticons can have important effects on reader's perceptions. People want to predict our behaviour, and we theirs.


Personality, emoticons and capitalisation in email
The research on nonverbal behaviour in emails is not as simple as emoticons are good while capitalisation is bad. It seems both capitalisation and emoticons can evoke polarised responses. Perhaps less polarised for capitalisation which is normally considered a no-no in emails. Although capitalisation can also communicate excitement and not just senseless shouting.

For emoticons, there is some research finding they can take the sting out of a flame (a message with negative content), while others find it doesn't. Perhaps some of this variability in the perception of capitalisation and emoticons comes down to personality?


The study
Byron and Baldridge (2007) researched this by asking college students to fill in a personality questionnaire and then read emails from an unknown person. These were simple requests for copies of academic papers or information about the university. Each student was randomly assigned to read two of four differently presented emails. Some of the emails were all capitalised, others included emoticons and the rest neither, so the researchers could compare responses. The students then rated the sender's likeability.

They found that, sure enough, using correct capitalisation and emoticons tended to make a better impression on readers. The reader's personality also influenced how emoticons and capitalisation were perceived. Readers high in both extroversion and emotional stability were likely to rate sender's emails as more likeable if they had correct capitalisation. As for emoticons, readers higher in emotional stability were likely to rate sender's emails more likeable if they used emoticons.

The opposite was also true. This meant that for the introverted and emotionally unstable, correct capitalisation tended not to affect the sender's likeability, perhaps even lowering it. Similarly, emoticons had little effect on the emotionally unstable.


More questions than answers
These results are interesting but they also raise loads more questions. Emoticons may make the sender appear more likeable, but do they also make them seem less professional? Can emoticons really take the sting out of a flame? In this study, they only used a smiley face :-) but what about all the other emoticons? And what if you're using emoticons other people don't understand?

These questions are multiplied if more advanced ways of communicating emotion in email become a reality. Researchers are currently working on electronic mail systems which involve expressive typography, graphical components as well as old fashioned words to convey emotion. Whether this will provide a significant and useable step forward in email over punctuation, italicisation and capitalisation, we shall have to wait and see. Until then, WE'VE GOT QUITE ENOUGH QUESTIONS TO ANSWER ABOUT EMAIL JUST AS IT IS :-)

Sorry.

» This post is part of a series on nonverbal behaviour.

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Communicating Persuasively: Email or Face-to-Face?

Face to Face
[Photo by Eden-lys]
Our intuitive understanding is that face-to-face communication is the most persuasive. In reality, of course, it's not always possible to meet in person, so email wins out. How, then, do people react to persuasion attempts over email? Persuasion research has uncovered fascinating effects: that men seem more responsive to email because it bypasses their competitive tendencies (Guadagno & Cialdini, 2002). Women, however, may respond better in face-to-face encounters because they are more 'relationship-minded'. But is this finding just a gender stereotype?


Gender stereotypes
Guadagno and Cialdini explain their results in terms of expectations about social roles. Cultural stereotypes have it that men are task-oriented whereas women are relationship-oriented. So, when put in a situation where relationships were important i.e. face-to-face, women tend to follow the cultural stereotype. Similarly, as men are often viewed as more competitive, when they face each other they tend to be more competitive and so less open to persuasion.

Practically, what this research is suggesting is that email could provide a way of side-stepping men's competitive tendencies. But, this research doesn't consider the effects of pre-existing relationships. After all, we react differently to friends than strangers.

In an upcoming article, however, to be published in the journal 'Computers and Human Behaviour', Guadagno and Cialdini (2007) examine the effect of relationships. The problem for researchers is how to manipulate people's relationships experimentally to effectively test the differences. Guadagno and Cialdini use the concept of 'oneness'.


Oneness
Oneness refers to the idea of an interconnected identity. The closer two people feel, the more helping the other person is like helping themselves. So oneness can promote altruistic behaviour. Oneness can also be seen in terms of the classic in-group out-group dichotomy in social psychology. People show a positive bias towards other people who are in the same notional group as themselves: e.g. work colleagues.

Oneness was very simply manipulated in Guadagno and Cialdini's study by encouraging strangers to view each other in one of two ways. In the first manipulation two strangers were shown fictional results of a questionnaire they had completed which showed they had identical personalities. In the second, the fictional results showed they had completely different personalities. In this way, the first groups 'oneness' was encouraged, while in the second it was discouraged.

Then, as had been done in the previous study, participants attempted to persuade each other.


Results
The researchers found that when there were low levels of oneness between men, email was a more effective way to communicate. Conversely, for women, higher levels of oneness made face-to-face encounters significantly more persuasive.

How can these results be explained? Women may not generally be easily persuaded over email because there is less opportunity to form relationships from which attitude changes can be built. Men, however, tend to be less competitive over email and are better able to concentrate on arguments presented, rather than being distracted by seeing the other man as a threat.


Male-female interaction
Bear in mind that this study is ironing out the spectrum of differences amongst both men and women. In other words, clearly not all women are always relationship-focussed and not all men are always task-focussed. It seems an obvious point but it's a mistake often made in mainstream media presentation of psychology research.

Additionally, one of the drawbacks of the study was that it only concentrated on same-sex communication. Although, I would suggest it's better not to think of this study in terms of men and women but in terms of individual relationships.

So, if you want to persuade someone with whom you have a competitive relationship - whatever your and their gender - email might be a better choice. On the other hand, if your persuasion attempt is aimed at someone with whom you have a more cooperative relationship, face-to-face could be a better choice. Unfortunately, it isn't always possible to see someone face-to-face, so it's very useful to be aware of the processes operating in both face-to-face and online interactions.

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