The Secret Cause of Flame Wars

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.

In other words we are very bad at accurately reading the emotional tone of written communication. Or, put it another way, we are very bad at writing in such a way as to accurately convey our emotional tone. Actually, this is no surprise: good novellists are good because, often, they are able to use words and only words on a page and punctuation to convey well moods and emotional atmospheres. Most of us are not so gifted, but we think we are.

Do an experiment. Look back at some of your written stuff from, say, six months ago. What emotional tone does it convey? Is that what you intended? Try it again with several items, same test. I bet there's at least some stuff that either you are not sure about what emotional tone was in your mind, let alone intended or that shocks you because it seems well awry of what you know of your own attitudes and reactions.

Scary, eh?

Which leads us into a (Christian?) ethics of communication. Recognising both our own frailty [ie naffness in communicating especially in print] and the likelihood that other people are, on average, as naff as we are at it, what are the rules of thumb we should put in place to make practical policy of that troublesome saying of Jesus about specks and beams in eyes, and of the golden rule of "do as you'd be done by"?
I suggest:
Always assume that you may be misinterpreted and so on sensitive matters be extra careful, re-read and try to head off potential misunderstandings.
Make use of the preview button [do my eyes see what my fingers type here?]
If possible come back later to look at things with fresher eyes.
Always assume that other people don't actually mean to be nasty. If you are wrong, at least you will have the moral high ground by appearing to be gracious and generous! [Like Paul's burning coals thing]
Give gracious feed back and ask for clarification before "letting them have it with both barrels". That is, tell them "When you wrote 'blah...', it came over to me as 'ouch...', is that what you intended?"
I've fallen foul of nearly all of those things, so it is advice born in the crucible of heated tempers and frayed respect, however I do hope that I have been learning.

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Filed in: flame, email, psychology, tone