In judging someone's tone online, we're only right half the time

According to a study done by two guys from the University of Chicago and New York University published in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology earlier this year, people are 90 percent positive that they know exactly what you mean in that email you sent them. In fact, they're only right 50 percent of the time.

Wired Magazine wrote about this in the context of flame wars, calling the article "The Secret Cause of Flame Wars" (February 13, 2006).

The fact is, people often read things online — whether in emails, blogs or forums — and hear only their own voice, not the writer's voice. I know that this is certainly true for me, despite the amount of experience I have with the Internet.

I was born in 1975, before the Internet era. I discovered it once I got to university in the early 90s. I have now been online for thirteen years — I was active on IRC throughout my undergraduate years, took an online class, was an avid lurker on Usenet newsgroups, maintained a homepage on Geocities, was a frequent chatter on MSN before it closed down its public chatrooms, played games on Yahoo, even interned at a prototype online women's portal Homearts (which morphed a few years later into the very successful http://ivillage.com).

Later on I dabbled with Friendster but didn't really get into it — but I'm familiar with it nevertheless. Ditto for Orkut and Multiply. I was briefly a member of a forum for Malays living abroad. I played Neopets, after I was introduced to it by my little sister (who was born in the Internet era and knows a lot more than I do). I don't play any other games since I'm not a gamer, but my little brother does so I'm sort of familiar with the gaming mindset.

But despite all this experience in the field, I still can't help behaving immaturely online. Intellectually, I know that my interpretation of what so-and-so said, or what such-and-such wrote about, could be wrong but I haven't fully internalized this lesson. Just two days ago I got exasperated with somebody for something they said on their blog, when I probably shouldn't have been. Hope this attitude changes with time.