How would you react if you received this email message, “Sorry you couldnt make it today, your an indespensable part of the team. It has been awsome and we learned heaps but it was not the same without you. I will tell you all about it later. Edward.” Would you have been touched at the sentiment and feeling valued or would you have been shaking your head at the missed apostrophes and spelling errors? According to a new study your reaction reveals a lot about your personality.
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In the study subjects read email responses to an ad for a housemate that either contained no errors or had been altered to contain typos (like “make” reading as “mkae”) or grammar errors (such as to/too, its/it’s, or your/you’re). The subjects rated the email writers for intelligence, friendliness, and other attributes as well as answering questions that revealed something about their own personality.
At the end of the experiment the subjects were asked if they had noticed any errors in the email and if they had how much the errors had annoyed them.
The results showed that people who reported that they thought grammar is important at the beginning of the study were more likely to be bothered by grammatical errors in the emails, as you would expect. In addition however, it emerged that extroverted people are more likely to overlook typos and grammatical errors. By contrast, introverted people were more likely to judge the person harshly due to the errors.
If you aren’t sure whether you an introvert, see how you recat to some spelling errors or grammatical mistooks in an email and you might get an insight into your own persona.
