The "Whole" Truth About E-mails: An Experiment

Do you find that you lie more in e-mails rather than passing a sticky note to someone or hand writing a letter to a colleague? I know, I know, who writes hand written letters these days?

A study conducted by researchers from Lehigh, Rutgers and DePaul with 48 participants. They were given a sum of money. Then they were asked to divide it equally between themselves and a fictional person in a remote location. The researchers stated that:

Students using e-mail lied more than 92 percent of the time, while those using pen-and-paper lied slightly less than 64 percent. The rate of lying was almost 50 percent greater among those using e-mail than with those using pen-and-paper.

This was interesting as you start to wonder what your co-workers and manager(s) are really telling you. Are they telling you the truth or just part of it? Of course, you can never tell, since only body language can really tell if a person is lying or not. Even then, you have to be quite observant to figure it out.

This made me wonder, why would people lie more on e-mails rather than pen and paper? No one can explain this, but researchers have this theory:

But in trying to account for the difference between two communication modes that appear similar, the researchers surmise in their report that people may "feel written documents carry stronger legal consequences than do e-mails, which feel fleeting in nature, despite the fact that they are actually harder to erase or contain.

So next time you receive an e-mail from someone, ask yourself whether they are telling you the whole truth and nothing but the truth or only part of it. Unfortunately, most of the time, you will never really know.

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Until next time,

Take care - of your clutter!


Post from: Administrative Assistant Tips