The Secret Cause of Flame Wars 389
Mz6 writes "According to recent research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, I've only a 50-50 chance of ascertaining the tone of any e-mail message. The study also shows that people think they've correctly interpreted the tone of e-mails they receive 90 percent of the time. "That's how flame wars get started," says psychologist Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago, who conducted the research with Justin Kruger of New York University. "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," says Epley. 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. Those who sent the messages predicted that nearly 80 percent of the time their partners would correctly interpret the tone. In fact the recipients got it right just over 50 percent of the time."
Not news to us, unfortunately... (Score:2, Insightful)
Sadly, Slashdot readers have known this for years.
Kids, this is why it's so important to properly use your <sarcasm> tags and your emoticons!
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
2 Rules: (Score:5, Insightful)
2. When there are 2 ways to read something, assume the other end didn't want to offend you unless you have very good reason to assume they did (i.e. when the flame war is already running to the joy of the general audience).
Then again, if everyone knew those 2 rules and took them serious, trolls would probably go out on the street and set fire to real life objects... Maybe the world's better the way it is.
No surprise... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's an important skill (Score:3, Insightful)
This just in... (Score:2, Insightful)
--Captain Obvious
Another major flaw (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This just in... (Score:3, Insightful)
Mod parent up.
From what little details can be gathered from the article, the 20 statements were read and rated in isolation. Context is important in determining the tone of any statement, regardless of whether its spoken or written. Of course, in spoken language there's body language and, well, tone, to help, but the context is still very important.
In fact, the tone of an isolated statement can also contrast with the overall tone of the conversation, so the tone of the isolated statement may not be helpful in a face-to-face conversation, either.
So, while the study sounds interesting, I think it would be more interesting if they had used larger statements with context to see if the trends held. Perhaps they did this and the articles did poor reporting, but that's what I would think would need to be done. Interesting stuff, though. -- Paul
Re:Not news to us, unfortunately...Oops! (Score:1, Insightful)
Its like the picture with two faces or one vase, there are two equally valid ways to see the picture, but once you see once, its not at all obvious there a second interpretation.
Then again, I also know a guy who send emails along the lines. "This is why I'm right and you're not just wrong but stupid too. Now why are you being so childish as to continue this arguement? Lets end it now because I'm the adult and I want to have the last word and your desire to respond to what I've said is proof that you are a big baby." He's mystified that people don't respond to him being the bigger person.
I find this hard to believe... (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think most people are shocked at what the moderator action is to any one of their particular posts. This is why some people preface what they are about to say with, "Mod me as you will...", or "I know I'll burn karma for this but...". People know.
The problem isn't with being able to convey intent with email (words). The problem is with SEMI-LITERATE PEOPLE trying to convey, and conversely intepret, intent with email.
If you take the time to be clear and articulate, there is no way it can only be 50/50 on someone understanding your intent, unless you are speaking to an absolute moron.
Steve
Writing (Score:4, Insightful)
Can you guess the tone of this comment?
PRECISE DICTION (Score:5, Insightful)
There are devices such as certain words, punctuations or even emoticons that can help you give your message the flavor of meaning that you want it to have, provided you know how to use them correctly.
The skill to write well is a thousand times more valuable today than most people give it credit for. In a time when so much of our worldwide communication is written, we have to know how to properly build a written message instead of simply writing what we would speak and assume the reader will "get" it. You never know when you might offend someone.
Re:Serious or Sarcastic? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not because we can't, it's because we won't (Score:5, Insightful)
Most folks simply don't have the skill, or take the time, to craft a message that carries its context with it. The ironic flip side to this is that when someone does take more time to write a more solid, contextually portable note, people not used to digesting that sort of thing presume it's either pretentious, condescending, or just verbose for the sake of verbosity. This is a cultural thing, and speaks to the continuing erosion in critical thinking skills and the obligation families feel to pass them along to children.
Anyone good with rhetoric knows how important it is to put yourself in your audience's shoes before opening your yap. The clearest communicators I know are the ones that are the most broadly exposed to the world at large, and take a deep breath before saying/typing anything, the better to ask themselves: will the person about to receive this e-mail get it? Five extra seconds can save hours of backpeddling, re-explaining something, or salvaging that business/personal relationship. But we've switched to celebrating speed and quantity of noise over quality of actual communication. This isn't going away any time soon, especially when entire generations are hitting their first email-enabled actual jobs thinking that "Dude" is an entire sentence.
The plague that is the use of "like" among teenagers (and stunted-growth adults) is at the heart of this. When some 16-year-old encounters a friend in the mall and says, "So, I was like..." and rolls eyes in a re-enactment of experiencing the emotions surrounding some other social interchange, the message gets across. That even works on the phone ("I was like, 'oh no you did-unt'"). But when all of the social warm-and-fuzzies that a young person feels happen without the need for a multi-syllable vocabulary, we can't wonder why they suck at both investing rich meaning in, and parsing full meaning from the written word.
College students? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe it's just me getting older, but they're making a pretty big claim when their test group was a bunch of undergraduate students. I mean, it's a cliche that college students are clueless, hung over, self-involved, etc., etc., etc., and cliches get to be cliches for a reason.
More seriously, like any other skill, you get better at communication the more you do it (if you have any brains, and care at all what's going outside your own skull, that is). So I'd venture to say that a bunch of 30-year-olds would do better than those college students because they have moved out into the world and gotten smacked around because they didn't understand what people were really saying. 40-year-olds would do better and so on, up to some point at which the improvement would stop (probably when people started to think they know it all).
And there's the writing skill component. College students are learning to communicate, and from what I've seen of college grads their success rate is pretty spotty. It would presumably be easier to parse the tone of an e-mail sent by somebody who has more communications skill.
I could go on, but I think this is just confirming the experience of too many people, blinding them to the study's weaknesses.
Or maybe I just missed the point...
Re:Not news to us, unfortunately... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:2 Rules: (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this a solid solution for the problem? I see this as, perhaps, a workaround; a crutch for what may actually be an increasingly lacking reading comprehension skillset in modern society. How will leaning on emoticons make you a better writer or reader?
Instead of emoticons, use complete, structured thoughts and sentences, and know how to read them. Learn when and how to use word variants and punctuation to pace your sentences. Understand the difference between passive and active voice, and know when and why to use which. All of this seems to be a far more solid approach than emoticons.
We should be concerned with deterioration of language to the point where we need emoticons to interpret other people's written communication. Resorting to requiring smilies for correspondence surely cannot help to reverse any possible erosion of language arts skills that prompted the requirement in the first place.
It's good to know how to interpret other people's emoticons, as so many people who communicate via the Internet use them, but it's probably not a good idea to lean on them yourself.
Now, this is simply my opinion--I could be completely off-base. Are there any English teachers in the Slashdot audience who might have an opinion on the matter?
Re:2 Rules: (Score:2, Insightful)
no better than chance (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, no. 50-50 is not "no better than chance" when it comes to the tone of emails. That would imply that 50% of emails are friendly and 50% are unfriendly, and readers are getting half of both wrong.
Given this utter lack of understanding of probability and statistics, I'm going to have to doubt everything else the author says.
He'll probably take that as an insult. Well, fuck him.
That's Why . . . (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not news to us, unfortunately... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think it's fair to say that everyone chooses to be offended. I am rarely offended by internet posts, but occasionally someone does manage to sneak one in that raises my ire. "Righteous indignation" might be a better word for it...I don't know.
I think it's justified to be offended by someone who assumes you are an idiot for whatever pointless reason. For example: I'm a Christian. That does not in itself say much at all about my character, my mental capacity, or any personality traits I might have. Yet any time that comes up on one of the debate forums I frequent, there's some bigot who thinks that my faith invalidates any points I might have. I find such mindless hate offensive, whether it's directed at me or at someone else.
Because of that, one might occasionally misinterpret a sarcastic/satirical post as being sincere, and take offense. Two intelligent people can sort that out easily enough without things escalating by simply saying "No, you misunderstood me." It's when one or both choose to be idiots that things get stupid.
Re:2 Rules: (Score:3, Insightful)
Amen. Consider the following:
...and compare it to this:
Of course, it takes more effort to write the second example, and we're all looking over our shoulders to make sure the boss doesn't see us wasting our time on Slashdot, but the overall discussion would probably be shorter and more productive if everyone wrote the second way.
On the other hand, it would be boring as hell. :)
Flame on, Johnny!
Re:IRC (Score:3, Insightful)
That's because on IRC there are only two tones: SillyStupid and Asshole.
Re:2 Rules: (Score:1, Insightful)
Previously, text-only correspondence was easier since there was an implicit trust in the author's good intentions (as noted in RTFA). Nowadays we don't get that so much, and I think that's the major problem with online correspondence. Phrasing and smilies both help to overcome this, but cannot completely redress the fact that text-only communication is a crippled version of what we're used to in day-to-day life, and I think many people don't recognise it as such or treat it particularly differently.
Re:This just in... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd love to read the study, but the way it sounds, the subjects were given pre-built statements, an order to "be serious" or "be sarcastic", and told to send their pre-built statements to their partner while either "meaning" or "not meaning" it. If that's really the way it went down, then they're not testing for conveyance of emotion, they're testing for ESP. Given the fact that the recipients did "no better than chance" (the wording from the article) indicates to me that that's the actual methodology. Even with the brevity of the statements and the lack of context, I think they would have had at least a little success if the people sending the message had some control over the message they sent.
For example, if I'm told "Type 'the food is great here'", I would have to do precisely that. However, if they leave it open, and instruct me to "Use sarcasm in complaining about the food", I'd have a chance to do something like this:
"The food here is superb! Outstanding! One culinary masterpiece after another! While those fat, sweaty cooks may not strictly follow the hand-washing or hairnet policies, the end result is something I would definitely recommend to somebody I didn't want to see again. I particularly recommend the Gristle Surprise they serve on Tuesday, the Leftover Gristle Surprise they serve on Wednesday, and the Dessert Substance they serve on Thursday, which is a heavenly mixture of flour, water, possibly some sugar, and whatever Gristle Surprise they couldn't unload the two days before." Not profound humor, but certainly hard to mistake for serious accolades.
I've been misunderstood many times, but I'm sure my tone is conveyed more often than not. The most serious misunderstanding I've ever had came from my participation in a small social network made primarily of real-life friends, with a couple of people who were pretty inactive in the group. One of those was a very beautiful girl I'd met on a couple of occasions, but never really gotten to know. So, charmer that I was, I fired off a message that said how much I hoped to see everyone at an upcoming party, except for that girl, given that we were mortal enemies. I figured, "It's funny because we're not really mortal enemies," but that's not how she took it. It took a couple of apologetic e-mails to calm her down, and I never did see her again.
Bonus points for anyone who can figure out whether I was using the phrase "charmer that I was" in a serious or sarcastic sense.
That sort of miscommunication is an exception. Mostly, we have context that guides us in finding sarcasm. For example, we know the person, their likes and dislikes, etc. We might know something about what they're doing at the time they're writing it ("The food is great" can be taken one way if we know our correspondent is writing from a cruise ship, rather than a wilderness survival class). Etcetera, etcetera.
The interesting thing about the study was the confidence of the recipients. That does worry me.
We have been trolled (Score:3, Insightful)