E-mail has become one of the dominant forms of workplace communication, but new research suggests it also may be the most deceptive.
Researchers at Rutgers and DePaul Universities studied how e-mail influenced communication among 48 graduate students. In the study, they told students they had $89. Each student could then divide the money any way he or she liked and give a portion to another person whom they didn’t know.
The students used e-mail or pen and paper to divvy the pot. In describing the amount of money to be divided, students using e-mail lied more than 92 percent of the time. In comparison, about 64 percent of the students using pen and paper lied about the pot size.
Among those students who lied about the size of the pot, the students using pen and paper were more generous. On average, students using e-mail claimed the pot was $56, and they offered the other person $29. Pen-and-paper students said they had $67 to share and offered the other person $34.
“There is a growing concern in the workplace over e-mail communications, and it comes down to trust,” said Liuba Belkin, a co-author of the study and an assistant professor of management at Lehigh University, in a press release. “You’re not afforded the luxury of seeing nonverbal and behavioral cues over e-mail. And in an organizational context, that leaves a lot of room for misinterpretation and, as we saw in our study, intentional deception.”
The findings were presented at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management in August and reported in a Lehigh University press release.
Researchers noted that something changes when a person puts their fingers on a keyboard, rather than putting something in their own handwriting.
“E-mail communication decreases the amount of trust and cooperation we see in professional group work, and increases the negativity in performance evaluations,” said co-author Terri Kurtzberg of Rutgers. “People seem to feel more justified in acting in self-serving ways when typing as opposed to writing.”
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From 1 to 25 of 41 Comments
I thought this was interesting and creepy at the same time…
— MarshaThis also applies to music as well: playing an acoustic instrument as opposed to an electronic device, yields a different result, and a different understanding of music. Apparently the tactility of the medium informs the message.
— Lee BarryI am of the opinion that far too much emphasis is placed on email as a form of intra-office communication. All too often, that which can be communicated verbally, without doubt as to sarcasm or interpretation, is instead left to email.
This may allow people to use email as a crutch, so as to circumvent actual human interaction, embellish, and say things which would otherwise not be said in a personal or even telephone conversation. In my experience, which is by no means a scientific analysis, this greatly reduces office efficiency and goodwill between people working in close proximity to one another.
It seems far easier to fire off an email to an invisible, almost virtual office mate, than to imagine that they are a flesh and blood human being who will one day read your email. Email, by its very nature, is prone to misinterpretation. And we all have seen vicious online exchanges in venues such as web forums and blog postings. As previous articles have mentioned, such exchanges have the capacity for sadly escalating real world altercations.
On the positive side, email provides a legitimate record of exchange between people. In the office, disputes which would otherwise be regarded as a “he said, she said” affair can actually be referenced so as to get a supposedly true account of what had actually taken place. However, the question remains whether or not such a dispute would have arisen had email not been an option.
This study says very interesting things about the legitimacy of online communication, and how well people equate their virtual communication, with personal interaction.
— JsdAt least they didn’t email that they were the prime minister of Nigeria and had a few million to disburse and if they would only respond with their account numbers, then the money would immediately be wired…
You get it.
http://swine.wordpress.com
— (S)wineThe real core of the story is that apparently, given the opportunity, regardless of method of communication, the majority lied. There’s your “trust” issue, regardless of the medium in which the lie is told.
FROM TPP — I know. I found that depressing.
— ACW48 students? Doesn’t seem statistically significant. And it does not sound like there were any controls. Perhaps dishonest people prefer to use email, as opposed to email making any individual act less honestly. I’m sure the “anonymous” nature of email allows people to be less scrupulous, similar to anonymous comments on news articles.
— EricThere seems to be something missing here. And that missing piece may have to do with the reason or motivation for the lie. You say each person was told they had $89 dollars to divide any way they liked and to give a portion to a person they didn’t know? A few questions. Did the students expect that they were going to really get $89 or was this given as a hypothetical? When you say they could “divide it” anyway they liked, is that just referring to the fact that they were supposed to give some portion of it to another person? What, exactly, was the purpose of the email communication? Why would they be telling the other person they had something other than $89? What was gained by telling the other person they had less than $89. Sorry, I am not getting this. I do see the depressing statistic, but I don’t understand how it was arrived at or exactly what it represents. Am I just dense? What am I missing here? (That penultimate question is rhetorical.)
— NatThis raises the complementary question: are people more likely to trust a hand-written letter than an email? The Nielsen study (http://www.nielsen.com/media/2007/pr_071001.html) focused on trust in online advertising vs. word-of-mouth, rather than statements from J. Random person. Does anyone know of a specific study of how much people trust what they read, based purely on the medium, rather than the content?
— DevinI agree that the most revealing item is that everyone cheated, it could be that they felt the odd sense of anonymity that online behavior induces , especially in the area of sneaky or illegal activity.
This is odd since the ability to track someone online is pretty well developed, look at the great success that agencies have had trolling for pedophiles that somehow feel “safe” online.
Email isn’t the problem, immoral and unethical behavior is technology agnostic and still at the root of most of our problems.
— jstafuraI’m with Eric (comment #6). Far too many sweeping conclusions are drawn from experiments that involve a small number of 19 year-olds (the students in Psych 101 are often the subjects of these studies). I’d want to read more about how they did this before I’d give it any credence.
Also agree with those who commented on how depressing it was that so many lied. (Though that makes me wonder exactly what directions they received.)
E-mail has its problems, but many of those are because of improper use of the medium, vs. the medium itself.
— MaryMaybe the lesson here is to avoid those associated with Rutgers and DePaul Universities?
— Clotariore: #7 (Nat)
Ditto….
We aren’t told enough about the study or the directives to the particpants to make any judgement.
Why were participants given the money?
Who were the “people they didn’t know” they were supposed to share it with?
Why were they supposed to share it?
What did email have to do with anything?
Was this the (famous) “I offer you a share of my bonus and if you don’t like it you can see that neither of us gets anything?” (This game generally results in an offer of less than a third of the pot to be rejected.)
Please don’t try to shock us with examples of “bad” human nature without better context.
— tomPI agree with Nat, and I add that as a poor grad student myself, I’d be unlikely to give away any of the $89 dollars to a perfect stranger, let alone a friend, if I was given the money and told to divide it however I liked. I’d buy several weeks’ groceries, or I’d treat myself to the movies, or I’d get my teeth cleaned. Frankly, I think it’s fascinating that the students in the study gave away as much as they did.
— MaggieWhat field were the grad students studying?
What exactly were their instructions?
It seems there must be more to this, as they all seemed to tell the “other person” how much money they had.
Given the general instruction to divide the money any way I wanted with a stranger I knew nothing about, I would have written,
“Me: $89.00, Him: $0.00.”
— EricEmail is misused if it is used only as a replacement for other forms of communication because of its stated deficiencies - its lack of non-verbal ques that enable a fuller interpretation. Email, however, is used to great efficiency if it is used as a supplement to other communication forms. This is especially the case when applied to quickly and efficiently transmitting to one or many non-emotional factual information. I believe email has been a major facilitator in the growth of the world’s economy since its invention - in its inexpensive enabling of overseas communications and ultimately international trade.
— David Elliott Lewis, Ph.D.First, I agree with #7. How could they all independently come up with the scam of tricking the person they were giving money to into thinking they got a fair deal by telling them the total amount was lower? I don’t think this would occur to me if I was just told to divide money and give some away. Something in the study must have given the people a clue that they had this opportunity to keep more than they were telling the others.
That said, I think one can draw an even further conclusion - which is, in our society today, intentions matter much more than actions. In other words, instead of just saying, I have $60 and I am going to be nice and give you $10 instead of keeping it all myself, I have to deceive the recipient to make them think more highly of me and tell him I have $20 and am gamely giving them a completely equal share.
The study was done on graduate students, so I would assume they were mostly in their 20s and 30s. This generation (and I’m part of it) is ashamed of capitalism and what we perceive the rest of the world sees as our American culture. We are embarrassed to outwardly be seen keeping a profit and giving a lesser portion to a peer. So instead we do it underhandedly, in secret, because nothing will keep us from getting that profit, because we need it to survive.
I see this being acted out in government, business, from individual interactions to entire corporate operations.
We want to make a profit but we want to make it look like we are pure intentioned and always putting others before ourselves.
For example think of all the companies banking on the sale of “pink” whatever for breast cancer – it’s their intentions that matter, not what they end up doing with the money, or how much money they even donate.
— KBEmails and lies? NO!
I got 7 mil dollars from Nigeria and miraculous aphrodisiacs for my love life, all because of honest emails.
Email and the internet are simply MADE for escaping reality and responsibility. Email feels removed and detached, while pen and paper is something concrete.
I wasn’t surprised by this at all. I was also unsurprised about the deception, overall, related to the size of the pot. Many people are a lot less honest about money than everything else. And add to that, the students didn’t know the recipient of the money, so it was impersonal, too.
— WesleyWhat I want to know is why were the graduate students lying so much to begin with?
— galitEmails are great — far more efficient due to their concise nature nature of communication.
Cell phones — you can (almost) always be ‘connected’ where ever you are.
DANGER of both mentods of communication: a user can say that they are in a given location — and be elsewhere.
I don’t want to refer to THE TIMES’ Jason Blair or a reporter for USA TODAY or, another one at THE WASHINGTON POST or worse…
… the probably numerous other reporters and lay people who have used these marvelous new media to lie and obstrucate.
There are almost always many negative unintended consequences of quite new and useful innovations…
— David Chowes, New York CityI’m with some of you. This article is incomplete.
— JeffPeople are fools. Pieces of paper get thrown away, but emails leave something approaching a permanent record. If you’re going to lie in order to cheat people, as a practical matter, email is not the place to do it.
— david from downtownPeople are basically liars. That’s nothing new.
— Manuel FilbAbout #16, KB’s post:
Love to see the remarks of the Y Genners.
I take these remarks to heart, that their values are different, and that their motivations are not necessarily obvious–even though some will see this as some kind of an excuse.
Plus, they relate to electronic communication in their unique way, having grown up with it.
I hope we hear more, and I love to see so many different people weighing in on these subjects.
— WesleyI don’t know if such things exists anymore, but rather than give the students pen and paper what if they were given a typewriter would the results have been any different from using email. I would be reluctant to blame an email culture without knowing that.
By and large the sample size seems small as others have noted.
— BruceThis study makes sense to me. We know that exposure to cultural norms makes one more likely to participate in those norms and, thanks to terrible spam filters and that international trade in spamming, a large percentage of what we receive by email is false. It is a social network corroded and corrupted by deception . . . that’s why everyone says Web 3.0 has to be the semantic web with built-in filters for anti-social behaviors, including lying!
— Cathy Davidson