According to Wired News, researchers have found that people think they have correctly interpreted the tone of an email 90% of the time, but in tests, their interpretations are no better than chance. "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. The story says:
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% of the time their partners would correctly interpret the tone. In fact the recipients got it right just over 50% of the time.
The problem is that people interpret (or misinterpret) messages according to their own "moods, stereotypes and expectations" :
The reason for this is egocentrism, or the difficulty some people have detaching themselves from their own perspective, says Epley. In other words, people aren't that good at imagining how a message might be understood from another person's perspective.
Comment: Same thing applies to blog posts....
