Use Your Email as a Free Personality Test
Forget Myers-Briggs - People's Emails Reveal Personality Clues!
Feb 3, 2009
Quick - check your outbox! Are your emails salted with smiley faces? Do you use a lot of netspeak shorthand? David Greenfield, Ph.D., director of The Center for Internet Behavior, believes that these email habits reveal a great deal about personality (okay, maybe not in the depth of a Myers Briggs MBTI, but maybe more fun).
"Because we see email as more anonymous than in-person or phone interactions," says Dr Greenfield, "we're less inhibited, often showing sides of ourselves we may not even be aware of."
Do You Prefer Email and IM over Conversation?
Dr. Greenfield has spent over a decade studying Internet behavior, especially email and Internet addiction. Relying on emails and instant messaging in preference to face-to-face conversation may be a sign of such addiction as well as of social withdrawal and depression, according to the Center's web site.
Email and Non-Verbal Communication
One study at UCLA indicated that up to 93 percent of communication effectiveness is determined by nonverbal cues. "E-mail cannot reveal context and facial cues, which can and do add to the richness of communication," wrote Dr. Greenfield in Digital Dating: The Malt Shop of the Millennium (published on his web site).
To overcome the missing "richness", to compensate for the lack of facial expression and body language, email users substitute other cues in their emails. Barbara Hustedt Crook had a feature in Woman's World (September 22, 2008), based on Dr. Greenfield's work. In that article, Crook outlines a few of these "non-verbal cues".
- Netspeak: FWIW, AFAIK, people who consistently abbreviate are decisive pragmatists, intelligent, trendy and efficient. LOL.
- Emoticons: Frequent use of smileys (emoticons) reveals awareness of the importance of non-verbal cues and an attempt to replicate them in email. :^D.
- Case: Constant use of only lower case letters indicates charm, self-deprecating humor, understated grace, and comfort with self, according to Greenfield.
- Font: Customized fancy fonts point to a creative individualist with "strong artistic flair," says Greenfield. People who do this are imaginative and strong-willed.
- Color: People who write consistently in one color are "sensitive expressive", not shy about expressing feelings.
- Multiple Punctuation?!!!! "Your e-mail probably looks as vivacious as you sound" says Greenfield charitably. This is probably an attempt, as with emoticons, to add non-verbal cues.
- All upper case: Not mentioned by Crook in her WW article, typing in all caps is the Internet equivalent of shouting in someone's ear, and is considered poor taste. People who do this are frequently newbies (newcomers who don't know any better).
What Your Email Address Shows about You
According to lead researcher Mitja Back, a study done at the University of Leipzig in Germany revealed that "even the thinnest slice of computer mediated communication -- the mere e-mail address -- contains valid information about the personality of its owner." Back and her colleagues asked a panel of 100 students to guess the personalities of 599 young adults from their email addresses.
The panel's guesses agreed fairly well with a personality survey the teenagers had completed and showed "some degree of validity", according to the study.
Although it's not the best career aptitude test, it's still fun. Email gurus can enjoy using this information as a kind of online personality quiz, analyzing either their own outgoing emails or analyzing the contents of their in-boxes.
Now, what can be learned about the owners* of sexigurl243@hotmail.com and luvmytruck2much@yahoo.ca?
*These email addresses are totally imaginary, and any resemblance to the email addresses of real people is totally coincidental.
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