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'Negative intensification bias' and unintended meaning
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- corysama 5y agoSee also: Every flame war in the history of the Internet.
- fsckboy 5y agosee also, HN, where "the system" that keeps discussion civil focuses entirely on silencing any even slight negatives, and scant attention is paid to the hypersensitivities of the numerous offendees
- dane-pgp 5y agoOh yeah? Well your face focuses entirely on silencing any even slight negatives! Ha, got 'em!
- dang 5y agoThat's a misperception of the strategy, which isn't about keeping discussion "civil" (we stopped using that word years ago), let alone protecting oversensitive feelings, but rather about staving off the default tendency for internet discussion to turn into lame repetitive shit. We just want an internet forum that stays interesting instead of burning itself to the ground. Scorched earth is not interesting (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20scorched%20earth&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...). If you know a better way to do that, I'm all ears. It might be good to first read some past explanations about why the rules are the way they are, so as not to repeat arguments that have already been answered. This subthread gives a worked, detailed example (but it's long): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27161447 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27161447. A few other past explanations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26157447 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26157447 (Feb 2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22805993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22805993 (April 2020)
- GeoAtreides 5y ago> If you know a better way to do that, I'm all ears. on /r9k if your message isn't sufficiently unique (judged by bot), it gets deleted and you get a small ban. if you continue, the ban duration increases.
- dang 5y agoThe kind of repetition I'm talking about probably can't be detected by bots, but I'd be delighted to be proven wrong about that. The data is all public so anyone can try!
- fsckboy 5y agoyou were triggered because I mentioned HN and your closeness to HN moderation blinded you to the value of the comment I made. The article we are discussing is very well summarized by its title, "'Negative intensification bias' and unintended meaning", i.e. I was "on topic". You are dismissing my comment on a tangent about HN without considering whether the ideas of the article offer any fresh insights that would suggest some alternate goals for managing discussions in general, and whether they apply to HN. and my comment is being treated with negative intensification bias in reaction to unintended meaning! QED
- sovok_x 5y agoTLDR: don't be passive-agressive and don't pressure the respondent.
- ComputerGuru 5y agoThat’s really not the conclusion of the article whatsoever.
- sovok_x 5y agoGiven their examples of the bad things in emails I think it should be close enough.
- ComputerGuru 5y agoI don’t know, to me it seemed the in addition to common courtesy when composing emails it was more perhaps the more important part to also try to be charitable with your interpretation. That whole thing about offense being taken and given, that random strangers didn’t find these emails to be bad, etc.
- sovok_x 5y agoI feel like I am downvoted for just engaging in an opinionated discussion, but whatever... The sender there have more power over the result of the exchange, and respondent have a kind of passive role of reacting to the initial stimulus. The common courtesy is one thing known to almost everyone who cares but the sender's passive-agressiveness is hidden from their sight, as is the desire to pressure respondent for some kind of results. The respondents in a calm and charitable state of mind wouldn't normally overreact as much so they are either overworked or anxious which increases the threshold of picking the bad in seemingly common stuff. It's impossible to change other random people nor alleviate their anxieties or tiredness. So it's on the sender to avoid that which I implied in the TS comment, which in itself is based on the article's examples.
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- vmception 5y agoI have a bias against the people who create names of biases They’re making up names on the spot and we’re nodding our heads as if these are accepted academic phenomenon
- pbhjpbhj 5y agoI'm so offended that you didn't even acknowledge us as worthy of proper punctuation in your comment. /s
- _Adam 5y agoThe article would be way more helpful with examples. What's an email that sounds "negative" but isn't?
- thatsamonad 5y agoMaybe it’s just me, but one email or IM response that really comes off that way is someone just replying with “Ok” and nothing else.
- kayodelycaon 5y agoOr worse: “Ok.” A period can completely change the meaning of a message. One of the managers in my company has the bad habit of making speech to text replies to everything. The end result is: “Okay, Kayodé. Thanks.” Those replies do not help my anxiety disorder. XD
- taxcoder 5y agoHonest question. What offense do I cause by using punctuation? The lack of it bothers me - it seems sloppy. I tend to stay away from one word replies, and if I need to confirm use 10-4 or wilco. Are either of those offensive?
- kayodelycaon 5y agoIt depends on the message. A longer form message with punctuation is fine. In short messages, the period is read as an aggressive sudden stop.
- SquareWheel 5y agoI read it completely differently. I see a sentence without punctuation as disinterested, as if they don't even bother to complete the sentence. Maybe acceptable in an IM, but not an email.
- taxcoder 5y ago
- dwighttk 5y agoNot an office worker and spend much less than 2.5hrs a day reading and responding to emails, but man I don’t get this at all. Maybe people just don’t send me emails that make me feel bad? Slightly worried I’m constantly offending people like back when I heard that putting a period at the end of a text is the same thing as stabbing them through the neck with a letter opener.
- neltnerb 5y agoI'm honestly curious when that convention would have seeped into my brain; in checking, I only use periods for multi-sentence texts. And I've practically forgotten what it felt like to be in my 20s. Even my mother's text messages don't end in periods if they're a single sentence. Bizarre how the conventions of a particular communication medium just seep into your brain.
- aaron5 5y agohad to laugh at your second point - same for me. i was like, "but periods go after sentences, right?" but now i don't do it the super weird one is (i live in china currently) that there's a smiley face that is not a smiley face. i always used it. i was hip. i was fitting in. my emoticon game was making progress and then apparently i found out i was doing the equivalent of a reddit /s at the end of all my messages: "that smiley face is a fake smile" how could i know that? it's a yellow smiley face! haha
- dwighttk 5y agoA long time ago I decided I’d not use emoji, just smilies, but that went away once I got a smartphone and the emoji keyboard was right there
- junon 5y agoFor me, it was when I moved from the US to Germany. Germans do not use "haha" and the like, but instead emojis. A gratuitous amount. Either you use them or don't, but you have to realize how you come off to the other person (though admittedly this is less of a problem in Germany to begin with - being direkt and monotone is a virtue here sometimes).
- avsteele 5y agoHere's how I avoid any appearance of a negative tone: Before I try to correct an error, or ask for anything, I always preface it with "Thanks a lot for <replying, doing something previously, I agree with X, etc...>"
- mjburgess 5y agoAs soon as I noticed that pattern in your comms, I'd discount it. And probably be annoyed by the apparent insincerity, esp. when it would prefix something like "correcting an error". However, this would probably work on most.
- junon 5y agoThere's no solution here. Everyone is debating what is offensive or not, bike shedding over subjectivity and emotion. Either you cushion the blow and do what the GP does and have the effect you mention, or they don't and come off as "offensive". It seems communication of any kind these days is a double-edged sword.
- pbhjpbhj 5y agoI have someone who reviews some of my work and will tell me how great my work is then points out all the changes they want made -- it's clear nothing about the work is what they wanted, so the "well done with ..." just feels like being gas-lighted. In this case, however, I don't think they realise they're doing it.
- avsteele 5y agoThere's nothing insincere about it. It's a simple acknowledgement of the other persons contribution to a positive interaction. Trust me, no normal person is gets upset if you give them thanks or a compliment.
- im3w1l 5y agoI think people get upset that they are interacting with an algorithm so to speak. Actually that's not it either, people don't get upset when you start all your letters with "Dear X,". The upsetting thing is the violation of expectations. They thought you spontanously dropped the compliment but you didn't. So the best thing might be to go even further, make it actually obvious that it is formulaic. Just thinking out loud here.
- literallyaduck 5y agoObservers don't have insight into the receiver's perception of the senders repartee, demeanor, and past history. What might be innocent to an observer may have an undercurrent only seen from the historical context of the receiver.
- dpedu 5y agoOne of the few ideas out of an "employee handbook" that has ever stuck with me is the idea that you should always interpret messages like in this situation - in a professional setting - with vast assumptions that the author isn't trying to offend or upset you. They're just conveying information.
- mensetmanusman 5y agoThis is why I use emoticons :)
- fermentation 5y agoI had never seen anyone use these non-ironically until starting my first job, at which point I assumed every message containing one was passive-aggressive. I now realize that’s not the case, and use them myself
- itisit 5y agoThose are just as prone to misinterpretation. Emojis too [0]. [0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/sending-a-smiley-face-make-sure-you-know-what-youre-saying-11628522840?page=1 https://www.wsj.com/articles/sending-a-smiley-face-make-sure...
- kevinskii 5y agoA few years ago I had a classmate who was rudely terse in his replies to group emails. For instance, if someone asked, "Here is my understanding of blah blah. Is this correct?" This person would reply to all with only the word: "No." I was surprised to eventually learn that the person behind these weird emails was the friendliest student in the class. Apparently he just wasn't used to emailing. To him, "no" was equivalent to "No, sorry, I don't think that's quite right. I'll try to follow up shortly with a more detailed answer."
- dwaltrip 5y agoHow strange. Humans are interesting critters :)
- gerdesj 5y agoWhat seems to missing from this discussion is fundamental understanding of the mediums used for communication and why you might choose one of the other. We all know about them and yet skirt around the obvious issues with articles like this. Email generally gets through way faster than a mail letter but is often thought of as being similar. (E)mail gets the text through and no more in general although it can carry pictures and other media. (E)mail is store and forward - it will tolerate delays and eventually arrive. A phone call/direct conversation is immediate and generally requires more setup cost in time and effort. If the other end is unavailable it wont work at all. Telephone calls may suffer from lag and drop outs. Vocal comms do allow subtle extra information without needing crass emojis etc. Vocal comms are much faster. There are other factors such as delaying tactics and the like. For example if your work stack is too much, you can simply ignore emails for a while but an incoming call has to be answered or not at that point in time. To be fair, most people understand that non answer means try again later even if you know they could have answered at that time. Emails can be sat on. Emails can also be fibbed about: "Sorry, my spam filter must have eaten it" or "Your GMail is not sending to my Hotmail". Email is also often treated as IM. The thing about IM is it is instant by design and is supposed to be a two way chat. smtp isn't. On balance: for me, I prefer telephony or direct contact than email unless it is impractical or I need a record - even then I still can record a conversation.
- Arech 5y ago> We found people who had received the emails directly rated the messages far more negatively than did the observers. I wonder, how did they control for the context? Obviously, the person who received the mail knows much more context about it, than a side observer.