Communicating Persuasively, Email or Face-to-Face?

Jeremy Dean writes "Our intuitive understanding is that face-to-face communication is the most persuasive. In reality, of course, it's not always possible to meet in person, so email wins out. How, then, do people react to persuasion attempts over email? Persuasion research has uncovered fascinating effects: that men seem more responsive to email because it bypasses their competitive tendencies (Guadagno & Cialdini, 2002). Women, however, may respond better in face-to-face encounters because they are more 'relationship-minded'. But is this finding just a gender stereotype?"

Comments

Spam

[RockMFR]

If a chick came up to me in real life and said, "HEY BABY CUM CHECK OUT MY WEBCAM," I'd definitely be more persuaded. However, I don't think anybody could convince me that I need to enlarge 4 to 6 cm. My penis is just fine right now.

Most Effective: USE ALL CAPS WITH EXCLAMATIONS!!!!

[Cruxus]

The hierarchy of effective communication goes something like this:

1. African drums
2. Smoke signals
3. Cell phone with bad reception
4. Face-to-face communication
5. Instant messaging ;)
6. E-mail
7. E-MAIL WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS LIKE THIS WITH LOTS AND LOTS OF EXCLAMATION POINTS FOR ADDED EXTRA EMPHASIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Actual emails I receive

[rantingkitten]

I can't imagine why people would have trouble communicating via email -- male or female. Behold, snippets of actual user emails I receive from allegedly professional, successful adults with college educations:
These are actual emails I receive, daily, from the users at a telecom for which I work.

this phone has not worked in 2 days
error message is : failed to get boot parameters
via dHCP or whatever
please fix the phones
THANKS

"Via DHCP or whatever." Thanks.

WHY ARE THE PHONES NOT WORKING

That was the whole email. In its entirety.

Main number DOES NOT WORK and answers as DISCONNECTED. This number was successfully ported to you guys in August/September, and has otherwise been working fine !!!!!!!!!!!!!! We need this number to work ASAP!!!!!!!!!!

I swear to you I did not add a single exclamation point to that. Also, if you can tell me how "does not work" and "otherwise works fine" fit together, I'm listening.

FOR THE LAST 4 DAYS WE CANNOT MAKE OUTGOING CALLS TO 800 OR 866 NUMBERS. IT GOES TO A QUICK BUSY SOUND. PLS ADVISE.

"Pls" turn off your caps lock and learn to spell.

NOW you fucking tell me that? When in the fuck did you ever tell me I
would need a router or switch? Eveyone has those laying around?

And you also said I could plug it into the wall. What kind of
instruction is that? Do I just kick a hole in the wall big enough for a
USB connection, or does everyone have working sockets in their wall to
accomodate phone systems in case they get one?

Where do I get a fucking router or switch and how much more am I going
to have to spend? And where does THAT plug in?

I paid for a fucking phone that would plug into my computer, God damnit.

This was the response to a salesguy from my company telling the customer that the VoIP phone plugs into a router, not the modem jack on his Mac. I really wish I was making this one up.

You'll notice a pattern to these, as well. Specifically, people who have fairly severe problems, but don't tell anyone for days at a time, then dash off a barely-coherent, OF THE UTMOST IMPORTANCE message into the ether. This is what passes for proper business correspondance these days, and to these people, blithering about a problem days, weeks, or even months after the fact is a perfectly rational way to behave.

These are people who will go on and on about how successful they are with their little mortgage broker jobs or what-have-you. These are men AND women who read and write at the sixth-grade level.

Email fails to communicate -- not because of the medium, but because of the mouth-breathers who use it.