Not Funny

All my well meaning friends and relatives who send me funny stories, how do I tell them they are, um, not funny? Now research shows it is because they are egocentric. Duh. From the - New York Times:

In an article to be published next year in the Academy of Management Review, Kristin Byron, an assistant professor of management at Syracuse University's Whitman School of Management, finds that e-mail generally increases the likelihood of conflict and miscommunication.

One reason for this is that we tend to misinterpret positive e-mail messages as more neutral, and neutral ones as more negative, than the sender intended. Even jokes are rated as less funny by recipients than by senders.

We fail to realize this largely because of egocentricity, according to a 2005 article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Sitting alone in a cubicle or basement writing e-mail, the sender internally "hears" emotional overtones, though none of these cues will be sensed by the recipient.

My take is only slightly different - The problem with e-mail is that it lacks a prefrontal cortex to censor inappropriate impulsive behavior. I've decided to turn off the immediate send feature of my e-mail. I stack up all the e-mail I want to send, and then I push it all when I'm through. That gives me time, after hit "send", to go back, re-read, edit, delete, etc. I notice I almost always do so. The effort needed to read my own e-mail as my reader will read it is daunting, but when I do, I communicate more effectively. I'm just judging by results.

Interestingly, Tim Ferris suggested the same thing.