Have you ever received a text message from your good friend and you found yourself not understanding what your friend was trying to say? Communication is a big part of our life, we communicate with friends, colleagues, strangers, and etc, but for some reason, even though we communicate on a regular basis, we tend to miscommunicate sometimes, but more commonly via text.
When communicating, cues are the key to sending a message. In other words, when the sender is encoding a message, it is easier for the receiver to decode the messages with help of cues. However, in the case of texting, visual and voice cues cannot be seen nor heard, which can lead to miscommunication. A study by Kruger, Epley, Parker, & Ng (2005) found that when people are writing an email, they tend to write from their own point of view, also known as egocentrism. When the senders are writing emails, they are writing from their own perspective and, in a sense, expecting the receivers to understand what they mean, which was done in the study (2005). When the senders write emails, they must take into consideration that the receiver might not perceive certain words/sentences the same way, which leads to miscommunication. In the study (2005), one of the biggest issue was egocentrism; egocentrism is the inherent difficulty of not being able to to differentiate between self and others. This can lead to further understanding how miscommunication occurs when trying to communicate through email. The person who was writing the email (sender) had overconfidence that the receiver would be able to decode the email, but this was not the case.
This can further help us understand why we sometimes don’t understand our friends’ texts, because they were assuming that we would, but from their point of view and not ours. To minimize the problems from miscommunication when texting, we must revisit the thought of what effective communication is. Effective communication is to not be biased and self centered, but rather listen and be considerate to others. This can be utilized when communicating via text (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2012). This way, we might be able to minimize miscommunication. When preparing to text, the sender must think of several factors such as, ‘will the receiver understand what I am trying to say?’, ‘will they understand certain slangs or sayings?’ (this would preferably not be used), and etc. The sender has to make sure that the message they are trying to send to the receiver will be easy to decode (Schneider et al., 2012).
However, we must keep in mind that texting is not an ineffective method of communication; it can be very effective when done correctly. Texting allows us to communicate much effortlessly and quickly compared to the past. Using texting as a communication method is a very helpful tool with the right guidelines in mind. Next time you write a text to your friends, you might want to keep in mind that just because you understand what you are trying to say does not mean that they will, and thus ensure the information is delivered accurately.
References
Kruger, J., Epley, N., Parker, J., & Ng, Z. (2005). Egocentrism over e-mail: Can we
communicate as well as we think? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
89(6), 925-936. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.89.6.925
Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., & Coutts, L. M. (2012). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. Los Angeles: Sage.
I love the topic of this blog post. An alternative to emails and to text messaging is just picking up the phone and calling that person directly. I find that this can be so much easier when trying to get your points across to the other person. I have a friend who loves to write very long paragraphs of text messages. To save time, I find that just calling them is so much easier rather than just going back and forth with sending novels of writing.
Another tip I have for better email communication is to ask directly what you are trying to say. Don’t beat around the bush. Having a lot of fluff or useless information in an email is not needed when you are trying to get your point across. If you are thorough in your email, it will be that much easier for the recipient to understand you. Using proper grammar, correct greetings and closing lines, and even with having the patience with rereading the piece to make sure that your text or email makes sense really goes a long way. This will help one to ensure that their will not be any miscommunication with the writing.