![Psychology for Educators [And More]](https://s0.wp.com/wp-content/themes/pub/chateau/images/chateau-default.jpg "Psychology for Educators [And More]")
‘Banu Akrod (aged 23) delivered the best Plenary of the Convention’. That’s a straightforward remark, isn’t it? But wait – do I really mean it, or am I being sarcastic? Of course when I write something I know what my intention is, but what about the recipients of the message?
In a fascinating study, Professor Nicholas Epley et al asked some volunteers to write two sentences about some ordinary topics, such as food, cars, dating etc. One of them had to be sincere and the other one sarcastic. The subjects were then asked to convey these messages to another one of the participants. In some cases they were to do this over the phone and in another by e-mail. Would the recipients ‘get’ the right message? Does it make a difference which medium is used?
Crucially, the senders were asked to predict whether they thought their message would be properly understood. The recipients were also asked to predict in how many of the cases they would correctly gauge the sender’s intention.
The results can be seen in the graph below. Regardless of the medium, the senders were optimistic: they thought recipients would understand their intended meaning in about 80% of the cases. Recipients were even more optimistic – they thought they would ‘get it’ in 9 cases out of 10. Of course, they were both wrong…
The first thing which can immediately be seen from the graph is an ‘optimism bias’ – expectations exceeded the actual results in all cases. But whereas the senders were quite close in figuring out how many would understand what they really meant when this was conveyed over the phone (73.1%) they were very wrong when it came to online communication. The recipients got it right a little more than 56% of the time – that’s little better than chance! The difference between 56% and 78% is huge (and that between 56% and 89% is huger still! 🙂 )
The Moral: Prosodic features convey a wealth of information which is lost when you put something in writing. The likelihood of misunderstandings in online communication is very, very high. [Epley, N. “Mindwise” – Allen Lane 2014, p. 108].
[Look at any thread on FB where there is a divergence of opinion. Very often what starts as a polite disagreement quickly escalates into a proper punch-up (the well-known phenomenon of ‘flaming’). Epley’s findings can go a long way towards explaining why this happens, as does the fact that our brain has a built-in ‘negativity bias’. Not only do we focus excessively on negative incidents and slights, we tend to ‘overperceive’ them and remember them more.]
Psychology for Educators [And More] 
Thank you for this article. It explains beautifully that learning foreign languages cannot be based only on free of charge written communication tools that can be offered by the providers of the social networking sites Although, the sites can be uploaded with the useful handouts for teachers and learners, their contents will never be good enough to solve, replace or cover the intricate issues applying to the process of acquiring any of the foreign languages. Why? Simply, because clear and faultless communication is something more than just typing correctly concocted sentences and then send them. It involves the implementation of other senses such as hearing and eyesight meaning that the voice timbre and body language are equally important [studies show that the body language and the signs of facial expressions are even more important than words that are produced by the speaker at the time of communication] and the last but not least our brains’ inborn ability to make us concentrate on the negations deriving from the content of the messages such as slights rather than on the basic meaning of the words/ text. It sounds as simple recipe for bringing into life many misunderstandings between the messages’ writers and what is more, the said misunderstandings do not necessarily need to derive from the scarcity of the linguistic equipment to express the writers’ thoughts, to be honest, but from the ‘negativity bias’ of their brains….
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Thank you for your comment Kinga. Yes, I also think that on-line communication (as it is at present, at least) is a poor substitute for face-to-face interaction. Naturally, body language and paralinguistic features are extremely important in how the message is perceived. (Having said that, I believe that on-line elements can greatly enrich our ‘toolbox’ if you like and of course the addition of real-time video interaction can go a long way towards remedying some of the problems you mentioned). What I certainly agree with (and which was the main point behind the post) is that ‘negativity bias’ which you point out at the very end…
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Very interesting:))
Yet, when some senses are missing, we adapt and our other senses compensate as much as possible. For example, people who go blind become extremely sensitive in their other senses to make up for that loss.
I could be a subject for this experiment – (not again) – but I work online – which is fine on skype or virtual classroom/google hangouts – but a lot of the work is also asynchronous.
Therefore I may have developed super-human skills of detection by now – just from reading text;)
Seriously, I look forward to when I can blend the real with the virtual and my conferences will be on the ground and face to face to complement the online work….and to meet colleagues face to face and ‘see’ the funny expressions, nudges and winks!!
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You may be surprised by what you discover though… 🙂 One of the most consistent findings in Psychology (as I’m sure you know) is that we think our perception of reality is far closer to the real thing than it actually is… You may find that some people fail to appreciate some of what you consider to be your greatest contributions and instead admire you for other things which you could never have imagined. You may give a great webinar only to discover later that the audience loved it for completely different reasons than the ones you thought… [More on that in another post… 🙂 ]
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Yes, that’s true – and maybe it keeps the surprise and mystery alive – finding out about the things you never imagined – what could they be?
This needs further explanation:))
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And here is another little thing which came as a surprise to me when I first read about it: if it is something good, it is best if there is an aura of mystery about it; if it is something bad, it’s best to have (or construct) a good explanation about it. The idea is that if you have a secret admirer for instance and you don’t know who it is, you keep thinking about who it might be and that gives you added pleasure (‘You get twice the juice from half the fruit!’ [D. Gilbert]). If somebody has just dumped you, it is a good idea to come up with an explanation (‘He is too much of a philistine to appreciate my artistic nature’) so you can stop thinking about it and you can forget all about the whole sorry affair… 🙂
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I agree with Kinga on the point that online resources will never replace teachers but they are a useful tool to supplement classes and to help teachers with research etc.
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