Media naturalness theory is an idea put forward by Ned Kock, a Brazilian-American philosopher in 2001. The theory holds that since our ancestors have communicated primarily face-to-face, then evolutionary pressures have led to the development of a brain that is consequently designed for that form of communication. Other forms of communication are too recent in our evolutionary timeline and unlikely to have posed evolutionary pressures that could have shaped our brain in their direction. So by this theory writing has less power than talking and talking on the phone has less power than face to face talking. Yet what does that mean for generations like the millennials (that generation born between the early 1980s and 2000) who have grown up only knowing only a world of texting, emails and voicemail? To test this a new study has looked at how their experience of communicating love via email or voicemail differed.
If it is true that the further we get away from face to face communication the less effective it becomes then an email should be less effective in expressing romantic feelings than leaving a voice message.
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To test this millennial subjects were randomly assigned to send either a romantic email or a romantic voicemail to an object of their affection. As they did this their physiological arousal was measured by sensors attached to their face to measure muscle movement associated with positive and negative emotion. Sensors on the feet also measured general physical arousal.
The expectation was that email would be more frustrating than using voicemail but the results showed that people sending emails were more emotionally aroused and used stronger and more thoughtful language than those who used voicemails. When writing romantic emails the senders consciously or unconsciously added more positive content to their communication than was contained in the voicemails. There was not very much use of emoticons or emojis in these romantic emails but instead the senders took time to choose language carefully to convey their meaning.
The researchers noted that email has been in the popular consciousness since the 1990s and for millenials it has always been part of their consciousness. Maybe, in this fast paced world, even evolution is speeding up.
