What is your ‘email image’?
Have you heard of email psychology?
I came across this term recently after reading about studies done in the US and UK. Studies showed that 57% of surveyed adults admitted feeling some concerns about how their own level of intelligence would be perceived when writing emails.
A large number of people also admit to adapting the language and style of their emails to create their own ‘email image’.
This doesn’t come as a surprise when you consider that over 58% of those surveyed also admitted to making judgments about an email sender’s personality, intelligence, and social status.
What I did find surprising though was some of the other assumptions and judgments that email respondents admitted to:
- 33% of respondents try to guess someone’s age based only on the language, tone, and style that the person uses in their emails
- 28% try to guess the sender’s status as authority figure (or not) among his or her peers
- 23% judge how successful the sender might be in their lifetime
- 20% interpret the sender’s social status
- 11% of respondents will make a judgment about the sender’s sexual attractiveness
- 8% gauge the sender’s fashion sense
So next time you are sending an email, ask yourself what else your email is saying about you!
