Study Says People Who Continually Point Out Typos Are 'Jerks'

HughPickens.com writes: Sophie Kleeman, writes at Gizmodo that according to a study at the University of Michigan people who are more sensitive to written typos and grammatical errors are indeed the kinds of 'Type A assholes' everyone already suspects them to be. Researchers gathered 83 people and had them read emails that either contained typos ("mkae" or "abuot"), grammar errors (to/too, it's/its or your/you're), or no spelling mistakes at all. Participants were asked at the end of the experiment whether or not they'd spotted any grammatical errors or typos in the emails, and, if so, how much it had bothered them. The researchers then asked the participants to complete a Big Five personality assessment -- which rates where they are on a scale of openness, agreeableness, extraversion/introversion, neuroticism, and conscientiousness -- as well as answer questions about their age, background, and attitude towards language. People who tested as being more conscientious but less open were more sensitive to typos, while those with less agreeable personalities got more upset by grammatical errors. "Less agreeable participants showed more sensitivity to 'grammos' than participants high in agreeability," the researchers said, "perhaps because less agreeable people are less tolerant of deviations from convention."

Comments

Re:Totaly(sic) agree

[Dutch Gun]

I suspect this has to do with personalities that tend to favor order, logic, and organization, something that's obviously beneficial to programming or engineering, but could be a hindrance when dealing with messy and unpredictable human interpersonal relationships. As a programmer myself, seeing typos and grammatical errors tends to trigger something in my brain that screams "that's not correct - it needs fixing!" in the same way a crookedly hung painting will irritate people who strive to create a sense of order in their environment.

Of course, general social awareness prevents me from reacting too negatively to things like simple typos, but there are some people who simply don't have those sort of brain-to-mouth social filters. If you've never worked with someone like that, you know how awkward or unpleasant it can be unless you've got an *extremely* tolerant personality - which I'd admit I probably don't have.

I'd imagine our brains have evolved to recognize patterns and draw our attention to things that break those patterns, because in nature such a thing has a high probability of being either be interesting or dangerous. I think this could theoretically explain why bugs on streaming videos (logos overlaid in the corner of the video screen) tend to bother me more than most people - my brain recognizes it as something "different" and so it constantly draws my attention away from the content of the video.