One day, I was in a hurry to get through my e-mails so I could get to a meeting. Being short of time, I responded to an e-mail from a lady in another division with a rather short and direct response and offered my suggestions. Then off I went to my meeting. To my dismay, when I returned to my office, there was a response to my e-mail that said something to the effect, “Fine, if that’s the way you feel about it, take care of it yourself, by the way, don’t ask for my opinion on this again.” Wow, I thought, why such the harsh reaction to my seemingly harmless e-mail? I opened up my sent e-mails and read the message I sent her. After reading it several times and placing myself in her shoes, a light bulb went off in my head. The way I had written the e-mail was interpreted as very rude and used the tone that I didn’t really care about what she thought. The interpretation was actually the direct opposite of what I had intended in my message. In fact, I thought I was conveying my strong support for her.
Based on my conversations with several people, e-mail miscommunication is a common problem in the work place and in many personal lives. In 2005, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology published an article about this very subject. The article talks about two primary reasons for miscommunication in e-mails. The first reason for miscommunication over e-mail is the inability to see body language and hear the tone of the message since we cannot hear or see the person deliver the message verbally. The second reason for this miscommunication is egocentrism. It does not always allow the recipient to interpret the message as the sender intended. Egocentrism is defined as, “the inherent difficulty of moving beyond one’s subjective experience of a stimulus and imagining how the stimulus might be evaluated by someone who does not share one’s privileged perspective” (Epley, Kruger, Parker, Zhi-W, 2005, p. 926).
I personally believe the inability to see body language and hear the tone of a message delivered verbally creates a lot of misunderstanding. I find it difficult to detect the tone of an e-mail and often rely upon my personal experiences with the sender to help determine the underlying tone of a message. The miscommunication problem will exist as long as e-mail is used by so a large part of the population. Maybe companies could give their employees more training or tips on how to navigate the possible mine fields in e-mail communications.
Reference:
Kruger, J., Epley, N., Parker, J., & Zhi-Wen, N. (2005). Egocentrism over e-mail: Can we communicate as well as we think?. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 89(6), 925-936. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.89.6.925.
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