I came across a brief Wired post exploring the inability to communicate actual intent in email. The Wired articled referenced “recent” research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by Epley and Kruger.
The Wired article refers to Epley and Kruger in stating:
The researchers took 30 pairs of undergraduate students and gave each one a list of 20 statements about topics like campus food or the weather. Assuming either a serious or sarcastic tone, one member of each pair e-mailed the statements to his or her partner. The partners then guessed the intended tone and indicated how confident they were in their answers.
Evidently, those receiving the messages understood the tone at about chance level.
I think this and the explanation of the researchers (we are egocentric and know what we want to convey and assume that the message says that) is interesting and should be part of the message when talking with teachers about email. Evidently, we often lack the metacognitive ability to differentiate the meaning in our head from the meaning on the screen until we receive the reply indicating we have been misunderstood.
I wanted to read the original work and tried to locate the authors and theme in Google Scholar. The Wired article does not provide a reference.
I found Kruger, J., Epley, N., Parker, J. & Ng, A. (2005). Egocentrism over e-mail: We communicate as well as we think? JPSP, 89, 925-935. The article does deal with egocentrism and email, but the Wired piece leads with comments from the experiments and seems to imply newer work.
Blogged with Flock
