Andy’s Quick Hits (61): We are Terrible at Interpreting Emotions in Email — Even (Especially) from Friends

Photo 105866510 / Email © Vadymvdrobot | Dreamstime.com

Emojis have been with us for a while now and these also seem to serve as tools to portray subtle feelings and emotions replacing body language and tone of voice in short messages. Email has been with us for a longer time and we rarely use emojis in email or not as often at least. Especially in business contexts.

This is where this research I stumbled across from a few years ago caught my eye. It also sounds counter intuitive. We know our friends, so are likely to know their feelings and ability, for example, to be sarcastic. But not so according to this research.

Overconfidence at the Keyboard: Confidence and Accuracy in Interpreting Affect in E‐Mail Exchanges

So how did the researchers (Monica Riordan and Lauren Trichtinger) test this. Well, they conducted various experiments and in one writers were instructed to write two emails. One on a preset scenario and one freely written. They then identified out of eight preset emotions, the ones they were expressing. The emails were then sent to and read by strangers and also friends. The receivers had to judge the emails based on…