“In a recent study of 30 undergraduate students, researchers from the University of Chicago and New York University said the tone of an email message was only correctly interpreted 50 per cent of the time.
Psychologists Nicholas Epley and Justin Kruger paired the students off and gave each a list of 20 statements about general topics such as campus food and the weather and were asked to e-mail the statements to a partner introducing either a serious or sarcastic tone.
The senders of the messages expected their partners to correctly interpret their tone nearly 80 per cent of the time, but in fact they only scored just over 50 per cent, said the report in Wired.
Those attempting to interpret the message believed they had scored 90 per cent accuracy, according to the results which have been published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.” Age