The Only Flame [War] In Town

Sez Wired:

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.

Why?

"People often think the tone or emotion in their messages is obvious because they 'hear' the tone they intend in their head as they write," Epley explains.

At the same time, those reading messages unconsciously interpret them based on their current mood, stereotypes and expectations. Despite this, the research subjects thought they accurately interpreted the messages nine out of 10 times.

I think there is a larger point here, too, which is that as a culture we are transitioning back to being writing-based, after a century of us being primarily oral--or telephone--based. After all, we're used to using tone of voice (both broad and subtle), facial expressions, body language, and other clues to help us interpret what someone says to us. With e-mail and Instant Messaging, we don't have that, especially when we're communicating with someone we don't know very well. Thus, there is the tendency to "fill in" that missing information with our own--often with dangerous consequences.

And one big reason we don't always correctly interpret the tone of what's written to us is that very often the person doing the writing hasn't done a good job of giving us any clues to that interpretation (yes, I curse those infernal smileys, but I grudgingly admit that I find them helpful--both in reading and writing notes, especially via Instant Messaging, and especially for someone overly enamored of sarcasm). People laugh at me for laboring over e-mail missives (and especially Instant Messages--which for me are often anything but "instant") but I like to think that the care in composition I try to put in helps avoid misunderstandings (and thus flame wars). This isn't always the case, I've found, but I do try.
E-mail and IM have proven to be invaluable--both professionally and personally--for effortlessly keeping in touch with people (especially for someone who is not a telephone junkie like myself) and of course for faciliating quick, dashed-off missives. Unfortunately, that dashed-off-ness sometimes leads to trouble.