We will communicate, we will communicate

An inability to step outside of one’s own head may be behind e-mail miscommunication, according to recent research.

So starts an article in the American Psychological Association: Monitor

It would appear that we grossly over-estimate our ability to communicate, especially when we write (oh, dear):

The participants then listened to or read their partners’ statements, guessed the intended tone and indicated how confident they were in their answers.

Both the e-mailers and those who recorded their messages were highly confident that their partners would correctly detect their tone–both groups predicted about a 78 percent success rate. The speakers weren’t too far off–their partners got the tone correct about 75 percent of the time. The partners who read the statements over e-mail, though, had only a 56 percent success rate–not much better than chance.

What’s more, the participants who received the messages were no better at predicting their own success–both the listeners and the readers guessed that they had correctly interpreted the message’s tone 90 percent of the time.

I suppose that means that half of you reading this have absolutely no idea what I am talking about, but I believe that nearly all of you get it.

Rubyard Kippling: “Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.”

Via CMS