'Negative intensification bias' and unintended meaning

2021-09-0221:564484www.bbc.com

'Negative intensification bias' can leave us offended by an innocent work email – but there are ways to avoid it.

The Conversation
'Negative intensification bias' can leave us offended by an innocent work email – but there are ways to avoid it.

Most people use email frequently in their work, even more during lockdowns and with increased working from home. And all of us have heard tips for “netiquette” – those helpful hints for avoiding offence or miscommunication in the messages we send.

But here’s the thing. Offence is taken as well as given. Neither good intentions nor perfect email etiquette will necessarily avoid problems.

This is because email readers are often subject to what’s called “negative intensification bias”. They often read into messages negativity the sender didn’t intend, or they exaggerate even a hint of negativity.

Office workers spend about 2.5 hours a day reading, writing and responding to email. The vast majority report at least occasionally receiving emails they’d describe as offensive or disrespectful – in one study, 91% reported receiving such emails from their boss.

Given the volume of workplace emails, an occasional negative exchange is probably inevitable. However, certain features of email may make matters worse, increasing the likelihood of miscommunication and conflict escalation.

For example, compared to face-to-face communication, email entails delayed feedback. In face-to-face communication we’re better able to monitor and repair misunderstandings in real time.

Emails also involve reduced “social presence” – the perception the other person is real and “there” in the interaction. Delayed feedback increases the chances of misunderstanding, and low social presence can lower inhibitions and encourage angry replies or “flaming”.

The risk of unintended meanings

Everyone who sends and receives email at work knows the problems that can arise. A Google search will find hundreds of articles about how to avoid them. And there’s good reason for all that attention.

Workplace emails that people consider rude, insulting or impolite create stressdetract from productivity and affect wellbeing – even outside the workplace.

Email etiquette advice includes minimising “reply all” responses, being cautious with humour, assuming the message is not confidential and asking a colleague to read a difficult message before sending.

All sensible, but it gives the mistaken impression that constructing tactful messages is all that’s needed. It ignores the fact that people receiving email messages are active processors of information who bring their own sensitivities and background knowledge to their interpretation of a message.

Perceiving negativity

In our research, we asked 276 adults in New Zealand and Australia who used email regularly at work to provide an example of an email they had received that either conveyed or prompted negative emotion.

We asked them questions about the email and then asked objective observers to read the same messages. We found people who had received the emails directly rated the messages far more negatively than did the observers.

This bias makes us often read into messages negativity the sender didn’t intend, or exaggerate even a hint of negativity (Credit: Getty Images)

This bias makes us often read into messages negativity the sender didn’t intend, or exaggerate even a hint of negativity (Credit: Getty Images)

The difference was even greater when the participant’s organisation had a climate in which negative communication was common and when the email sender was in a higher position of power.

This shows a negative intensification bias – that is, an inclination to “read in” more negativity than is apparent in the objective features of the message. It shows context and relationships can influence just how much negativity we perceive.

Power dynamics matter

Some of the examples would be seen as negative by nearly everyone: “If you learned to read you would have found the relevant document.”

But many were outwardly civil and even polite: “We acknowledge that our request has a very short timeline and certainly appreciate that you are very busy.” Or, “Just wondering why no update has been received. No news is good news hopefully!”

In fact, a lack of overtly negative features in a message was a poor predictor of people’s negative perceptions.

Hyper-negative interpretations were most likely to come into play with ambiguous messages that could be interpreted in multiple ways.

This was especially true when the messages were short and impersonal and when the messages were from higher-ups in the organisation making requests or issuing directives, or when there was already tension in the relationship.

Interestingly, people’s awareness of the need for email etiquette seems to raise their expectation of what is acceptable. The participants’ explanations for why an email was seen as negative often cited rules for appropriate email behaviour.

Making email safe again

Because as a society we have developed views of what’s acceptable, a hastily written or abbreviated message can be read as an intentional slight.

If organisations want to reduce the likelihood of conflict over email communication, training in writing effective emails needs to be matched with similar attention to receiving email messages and the likelihood of negative intensification bias.

It is impossible for even the most sensitive writer to anticipate all potential causes of offence. Communication training should aim to heighten awareness of the many opportunities for misinterpretation in email and the tendency of receivers to read unintended negativity.

Acknowledging the role of power dynamics and the general climate in an organisation will also help. Demonstrating how internal tensions can be perceived in something as seemingly “innocent” as a brief email can also help improve workplace relationships in general.

Theodore E (Ted) Zorn is a professor of organisational communication at Massey University.


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Comments

  • By dwighttk 2021-09-0223:033 reply

    Not an office worker and spend much less than 2.5hrs a day reading and responding to emails, but man I don’t get this at all. Maybe people just don’t send me emails that make me feel bad?

    Slightly worried I’m constantly offending people like back when I heard that putting a period at the end of a text is the same thing as stabbing them through the neck with a letter opener.

    • By neltnerb 2021-09-0223:33

      I'm honestly curious when that convention would have seeped into my brain; in checking, I only use periods for multi-sentence texts. And I've practically forgotten what it felt like to be in my 20s. Even my mother's text messages don't end in periods if they're a single sentence. Bizarre how the conventions of a particular communication medium just seep into your brain.

    • By pif 2021-09-037:48

      I couldn't care less. Proper grammar can be sacrificed for my own sake (read: laziness) but never for someone's "I'm in the mood of inventing a new rule thus a I state that...".

    • By aaron5 2021-09-0223:451 reply

      had to laugh at your second point - same for me. i was like, "but periods go after sentences, right?" but now i don't do it

      the super weird one is (i live in china currently) that there's a smiley face that is not a smiley face. i always used it. i was hip. i was fitting in. my emoticon game was making progress and then apparently i found out i was doing the equivalent of a reddit /s at the end of all my messages: "that smiley face is a fake smile" how could i know that? it's a yellow smiley face! haha

      • By dwighttk 2021-09-030:041 reply

        A long time ago I decided I’d not use emoji, just smilies, but that went away once I got a smartphone and the emoji keyboard was right there

        • By junon 2021-09-039:06

          For me, it was when I moved from the US to Germany. Germans do not use "haha" and the like, but instead emojis. A gratuitous amount.

          Either you use them or don't, but you have to realize how you come off to the other person (though admittedly this is less of a problem in Germany to begin with - being direkt and monotone is a virtue here sometimes).

  • By dpedu 2021-09-0223:52

    One of the few ideas out of an "employee handbook" that has ever stuck with me is the idea that you should always interpret messages like in this situation - in a professional setting - with vast assumptions that the author isn't trying to offend or upset you. They're just conveying information.

  • By kevinskii 2021-09-030:001 reply

    A few years ago I had a classmate who was rudely terse in his replies to group emails. For instance, if someone asked, "Here is my understanding of blah blah. Is this correct?" This person would reply to all with only the word: "No."

    I was surprised to eventually learn that the person behind these weird emails was the friendliest student in the class. Apparently he just wasn't used to emailing. To him, "no" was equivalent to "No, sorry, I don't think that's quite right. I'll try to follow up shortly with a more detailed answer."

    • By dwaltrip 2021-09-037:56

      How strange. Humans are interesting critters :)

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