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U-M Study Links Reaction to Email Errors to Personality
If you're an introvert, you're likely to make judgments about author's intelligence if you spot a typo, University of Michigan study shows.
ANN ARBOR, MI – Howe ewe raect two tuypos, misteaks an grammer arrows en emails may ofFur incite abuot yer peresonality.
What idiot wrote that mess? Let’s try again.
How you react to typos, mistakes and grammar errors in emails may offer insight about your personality.
If you were annoyed by the first sentence, you’re probably an introvert, according to a new study by University of Michigan linguists.
Extroverted people are more likely to withhold judgment — perhaps even type “no problum” followed by a series of superfluous exclamation points — and happily let the errors slide. Their introverted counterparts are more likely to turn into the "grammar police" and harbor judgmental feelings or question the author's overall intelligence, according to the study.
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+ List My Business"This is the first study to show that the personality traits of listeners/readers have an effect on the interpretation of language," the study’s lead author, U-M professor of linguistics and psychology Julie Boland, said in a news release. "In this experiment, we examined the social judgments that readers made about the writers."
Eighty-three participants read email responses to an ad for a housemate that either contained no errors or had been altered to include either typos, such as mkae (make) or abuot (about), or grammar errors, such as to/too, it's/its or your/you're.
They rated the email writers in terms of perceived intelligence, friendliness and other attributes, as well as provided information about themselves.
At the end of the experiment, participants were asked if they noticed any grammatical errors in the responses. If they answered "yes," they indicated how much the errors bothered them.
As expected, participants who reported grammar being important at the beginning of the experiment were more likely to be bothered by grammatical errors at the end, said study co-author Robin Queen, the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and professor and chair of U-M's Department of Linguistics.
In addition, less agreeable people are more sensitive to grammatical errors, while more conscientious and less open people are sensitive to typos, the researchers said.
The study appears on PLOS One online.
Image credit: CollegeDegrees360 via Flickr / Creative Commons
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