Posted by pseudoname on February 17, 2006, at 10:20:51
There was a recent study on how easy it is to misunderstand the tone of email messages — which are very like Babble messages. People sent either deliberately sarcastic messages or sincere messages; the recipients had to determine whether the text was sarcastic or sincere. They were correct in their determination 55% of the time — about the same as random chance!
Despite this lousy success rate, the readers felt they were very accurate in their assessments: 90% of the time they believed they were correct.
When the senders read the statements aloud over a telephone to the recipients, the accuracy of recipients' interpretations hugely improved.
This is because writers "hear" the tone of their message in their head as they write, but readers (who can't hear that tone) interpret messages based on their own current mood, stereotypes, and potentially irrelevant expectations.
This is another reason, perhaps, to take a deep breath and try to give other Babblers the benefit of the doubt when interpreting their tone, even when we're "sure" we're interpreting it correctly.
For posters, one commenter suggested reading a message out loud before sending it. That can help you block your privately-heard tone when you're assessing the actual text you're about to send.
The study is discussed here: http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2006/02/are_you_kidding_me_this_is_ser.php#more and abstracted here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=16393025&dopt=Citation Kruger J, Epley N, Parker J, & Ng Z. (2005). Egocentrism over e-mail: Can we communicate as well as we think? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 89(6), 925-936.
poster:pseudoname
thread:610569
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20060111/msgs/610569.html