[net.misc] Rudeness, profanity, exultation & other emotional outbursts

rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo) (12/23/85)

PSYCHOLOGY "DISCOVERS" FLAMING [Next they'll claim they invented it!]

Here's an amusing article on flames, those impetuous, ill-advised and
wonderful by-products of electronic mail technology.  It was forwarded
to the "english" mailing list here at work.  

					Implement extremism!
					Out of the locker room,
					& into the nets!



[From The New York Times, Tuesday, October 2, 1984, p. C1]

EMOTIONAL OUTBURSTS PUNCTUATE CONVERSATIONS BY COMPUTER
by Erik Eckholm

    Computer buffs call it  "flaming." Now scientists are  documenting
and  trying  to  explain   the  surprising  prevalence  of   rudeness,
profanity, exultation  and other  emotional outbursts  by people  when
they carry on discussions via computer.

    The frequent resort to emotional  language is just one of  several
special traits  of computer  communications discovered  by  behavioral
scientists studying how this new medium affects the message.

    Observing   both   experimental   groups   and   actual    working
environments, scientists at  Carnegie-Mellon University are  comparing
decision-making through face-to-face  discussions with that  conducted
electronically.

    In the experiments, in addition  to calling each other more  names
and generally showing more emotion, people "talking" by computer  took
longer to agree, and their final decisions tended to be more  extreme,
involving   either   greater   or   lesser   risk   than   the    more
middle-of-the-road decisions  reached  by groups  meeting  in  person.
Curiously,  those   who  made   such  decisions   through   electronic
give-and-take  believed  more  strongly  in  the  rightness  of  their
choices.

    As small computers proliferate in offices and homes, more business
discussions that were  once pursued face-to-face,  by telephone or  on
paper are  now taking  place by  way of  keyboards and  video  display
terminals.  With  electronic  mail, messages  are  left in  a  central
computer for reading by correspondents on their own computers at their
own   convenience.    Computer   conferences   can   be   carried   on
simultaneously or not.

    In some offices, observers  say, the traditional typed  memorandum
is all  but extinct,  and computer  mail is  replacing even  telephone
calls.  Employees  in  one corporation  studied  received or  sent  an
average of 24 computer messages a day.

    The unusual characteristics showing up in computer  communications
should not be seen as entirely negative, say the researchers.  When it
is not insulting, language that  is uninhibited and informal helps  to
bridge social barriers and may help  to draw out some people's  ideas.
And more extreme decisions can  be innovative and creative instead  of
foolish.

    Moreover,  members  of  groups  talking  electronically  tend   to
contribute much more equally to the discussion.

    "This is unusual group democracy," said Dr. Sara Kiesler, a
psychologist at Carnegie-Mellon.  "There is less of a tendency for one
person to dominate the conversation, or for others to defer to the one
with the highest status."

LOOSER STANDARDS FOR DISCUSSIONS

    Studies of  electronic mail  in several  Fortune 500  corporations
have confirmed  the  tendency for  people  to use  more  informal  and
expressive language on the computer than when communicating in person,
by telephone or by memo.

    "Whatever the company's pre-existing standards for the  expression
of opinion, electronic mail seems to loosen them," Dr. Lee Sproull,  a
sociologist at Carnegie-Mellon, said in an interview, But in  contrast
with the  experimental  findings,  in  the  corporate  world  positive
emotional expressions greatly outnumbered negative ones.

    The company studies  also indicate that  computers are  permitting
much wider  participation  in  discussions  than  in  the  past,  with
employees far from headquarters  now able to  follow debates and  make
their views known.

    Unusually expressive language  has been one  of the most  striking
characteristics of  computer  discussions studied  in  many  different
contexts.  "It's amazing," said Dr. Kiesler. "We've seen messages sent
out by managers -- messages that  will be seen by thousands of  people
-- that use language normally heard in locker rooms."

COMPUTER BULLETIN BOARDS

    The frequent use of  exuberant and offensive  terms has long  been
noted by observers of computer  bulletin boards.  In 1982 the  Defense
Communications Agency, which  manages the world's  oldest and  largest
computer network for use by Pentagon employees and contractors, issued
the following message to  potential bulletin board contributors:  "Due
to  past  problems  with  messages   deemed  in  bad  taste  by   'the
authorities,' messages  sent to  this  address are  manually  screened
(generally, every  couple  of  days)  before  being  remailed  to  the
Boards."

    Struggling to explain the  free-wheeling language that people  use
on computers,  the  Carnegie-Mellon scientists  note  that  electronic
communications  convey  none  of  the  non-verbal  cues  of   personal
conversation  --  the  eye  contact,  facial  expressions  and   voice
inflections that  provide  social  feedback  and  my  inhibit  extreme
behavior.  Even a memo, with  its letterhead and chosen form,  carries
more nonverbal information than does a message on a screen.  Also,  no
strong rules of etiquette for computer conversation have yet  evolved.

    Computer writers often become  deeply engrossed in their  message,
the researchers have found,  but their focus tends  to be on the  text
itself rather than their audience, perhaps another consequence of  the
lack of non-verbal feedback.

    In a forthcoming  paper, Dr.  Kiesler and  three colleagues  posit
that "using computers to communicate draws attention to the technology
and  to  the  content  of  communication  and  away  from  people  and
relationships with people."