We usually place tone on chat messages. We all have our own biases that affect our understanding of text communication or the more popular, chat messages. If we like someone, there is nothing that person could say, post on social media, or tell us at work that could offend us. We will always take it positively and agree unless something happens that we do not agree with. Our beliefs shape how we perceive things. And this is pretty much apparent in how we put a tone on text communication.
Judgments on chat messages
You must have experienced this. While reading a chat message from a co-worker, you suddenly get irritated by the message. A reaction formed in your head. For example, a co-worker messaged you asking where could he see the report that shows the performance of his team for yesterday. Knowing that you publish it daily in a group chat by sending the link there, your initial reaction is that the person is not reading the chatroom.
Another instance is when a co-worker asked for the reason behind a failing scorecard of her team. You, doing it daily and knowing the reason because you see it every day, again are prejudiced that she is not reading the report and maybe think she is stupid for not understanding it even if she reads the report.
Both of these reactions are based on our own thinking, not based on what the message is. Both are simply asking questions and the reaction is already looking into the future without much context from the questioner. We formed the context in our head and jumped to conclusions that are most of the time negative. The simple reason is because, from these two scenarios, is that our expectation is for them to read the report being sent daily. If they do, there is no need to ask the questions. They can do it themselves. And thus, that made us irritated without any basis from other people but rather just our own conclusion.
Placing a tone in chat messages
In the example above, a person reading it could put a different tone to this message: “Why is my team failing their scorecards?” After reading this, from your own experience, you may have read this with a tone that the questioner is angry and questioning you about the failed scores. Or in another tone, it would sound like questioning and being somewhat demeaning to you who created the report. It could also sound like the sender was pleading and on the verge of begging you to do something to help her team pass.
There is no tone in messages. It is just plain text. The reader is the one that gives it tone. The reason behind that is that our brain is trying to relate the real world to what we know so far. It is trying to create a relationship with our experiences and therefore, we create a tone to something we read. This is a survival instinct. When our brain does this, it puts us in flight-or-fight mode. Again, depending on what we encountered before, we put a tone on messages so we could react accordingly.
However, by doing so, we only apply how we see things. We disregard what the sender of the message is really pertaining to. And this usually creates misunderstandings between the two parties. By placing a tone on messages, based on our own experiences, we forget the literal meaning of the message – what is the reason why her team is failing? It is a question to know the reason. Just simple as that. No other meaning behind it.
Misunderstanding the message
Knowing a lot of things is beneficial. It could help us apply different approaches to specific problems. We could develop solutions that would resolve a situation. Learning new things always gives us new perspectives on things and see them differently. This enables us to create something that will help us achieve our goals.
But it has a disadvantage too. Well, not in the true sense of the word. We could maybe say a negative impact. Knowing more could sometimes backfire on us. This is because we apply our biases and experiences to what is presented to us. We assume things without asking questions. Sometimes, our line of questioning is directed toward confirming what we know. In turn, it becomes a paradox. Instead of understanding something different from what we know, we tend to seek affirmation of the knowledge we have.
That is why we misunderstand chat messages. In the examples given above, as I have said, our reactions are based primarily on our beliefs and biases. With the knowledge and information that we have, we tend to misunderstand the message. In continuing the example above, if we reply with “Because your team is failing attendance.”, we assume that that is the problem. There are other possibilities that we did not consider such as the report may be wrong or the person asking forgot that there is a new target to hit and so on.
By responding with the assumption that we know the cause of the problem, we tend to misunderstand the very nature and context of the message.
Putting ourselves in others’ shoes
We should put ourselves in the shoes of the person that sent the messages. By understanding where the person is coming from, we could minimize the effect of our biases when trying to understand the message. We could do this by asking questions and doing some research to gather more information and therefore, make a better response to the question.
I saw a post on Facebook about the reasoning of someone who buys a lot of sports cars. The person was asked if it would be better to donate the money to those in need. The person’s response was buying sports cars is helping people in need as it helps an industry or business to make money and thus, this person is helping other people who are in need. I responded that building a foundation to help others would have the same effect. That is when I got bashed and a lot of negative comments were made towards me.
In this example, all of the topics above that I mentioned showed. The people who gave me bad comments thought I was bashing the person. That is not true. I was simply saying what I thought. But everyone’s own biases kicked in. I just left and blocked that profile. I don’t need that kind of drama.
We all have the tendency to understand things based on what we know. Only if we are conscious of our biases and exert the effort to understand new things and perspectives can we have a true and meaningful conversation.
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