Texting and emotions

Texting and emotions

In 2014 Jill Campden a consultant emailed her boss Marty Finkel outlining a business strategy, Finkel replied with a one word answer “noted”, surprised by the brief and rather blank response Campden emailed Finkel asking if he was upset with her, a phone call later Camden discovered that Fingal was actually pleased with her business strategy and was just clearing the email from his inbox.

This is just one of the many examples of something that permeates nearly all of modern society Today, ELECTRONIC MESSAGING, this includes texting, email, social media, even facetime and Skype, they have their benefits but with that said there comes some costly downsides, ranging from the effects on grammar to the decline of social boundaries, there are a myriad of issues that arise, however the most important point can be it's negative affects on emotion. To begin with let's look at humans general tendencies of communication, according to a UCLA professor communication contains several facets including body language, vocal tone, pitch and emphasis and the content of the message being conveyed itself looking at the percentages one can see where trouble starts to rise, 58 percent of communication is conveyed through body language, 35 percent through vocal tone, pitch and emphasis and lastly a mere 7 percent is focused on the content. So while messaging someone electronically a grand total of 93 percent of the attempted message isn't even conveyed. The aids of emoji’s 😀😂😘, excessive punctuation ?!!!, capitalization aren't much help either.

Consider a 2005 study conducted by the American psychological association that exemplifies this issue perfectly. Participants were asked to send 10 statements in an email to a recipient with each statement having a different tone or intent, somewhere serious somewhere sarcastic. Sender’s of the email estimated that the recipients would correctly understand the intent of the statements with a 78 percent accuracy, the recipients only correctly identified the intent of the message with a 56 percent accuracy which is essentially flipping a coin on whether your intent is guessed correctly however when the statements were vocally transmitted via phone the recipients identified the intent of the message with a 74 percent accuracy nearly what the senders estimated. The results of this study are likely due to the sender writing out the text and reading it as they wanted it to be understood. According to John Kruger the leader of the study, if comprehending human communication consisted merely of translating sentences and syntax into thoughts and ideas there'd be no room for misunderstanding, but it does not, so there is. This is not to say electronic messaging has some affected benefits, their ease in simply stating facts to another works remarkably well, for example it is quite easy for me to text my friend if he wants to hang out on Friday at 6:00 PM, his response is either a yes or a no, very plain and direct and the words of Patricia Harmon an expert on emotional intelligence, there's nothing wrong with texting, if your objective is to communicate quickly and informally. However if my said friend declines due to something obviously bothering him, texting no longer will be able to effectively convey either of our emotions, if he says I've had a rough day… or I've had a rough day!!!! he could be sad or angry or something else, which when any one of those is understood will be treated in drastically different ways. On top of their ease electronic messages also provide a sense of protection for the sender, ultimately they hide the emotions of the sender with that being the intent and since emotion accounts for 93 percent of communication a vital facet is therefore removed.
Again in the words of Harmon “the effectiveness of every relationship depends on emotional communication” which electronic messaging lacks overall due to the conveying of no body language or vocal tone, the intent of an electronic message can be vastly miss understood.

These issues won't go away since this type of communication is only on the rise. Instead of completely abolishing it, like many other things, it is better to effectively use electronic messaging as an effective tool, not a detrimental one, this can be accomplished by limiting emotional types of electronic messaging and only using it to broaden your communication, not deep in it. Use it to the advantage of your communication without it being harmful, thank you and have a good day.