If you are the typical grammar police, you may not like what this study reveals.
A recent study named "If You're House Is Still Available, Send Me an Email" and conducted by Julie Boland, head linguistic researcher at University of Michigan, states that people who are sensitive to grammatical or typographical errors are most likely to be introverts.
The study involved 83 participants reading an email response to the housemate advertisement. Each email was drafted differently with some containing no mistakes at all, while others contained grammatical or typographical errors. Sixty-four percent of the participants were women and 96 percent of them spoke American English.
For the purpose of this study, the email had typographical and grammatical errors very similar to the kind we encounter in our day to day life, such as its for it's, your for you're, abuot for about, and the like. The study was split into three questionnaires.
The first questionnaire was used to acquire the demographic or behavioral information of the participants: age, gender, education, number of texts per day, time spent in reading, importance of grammar, among others.
The second was a 44-question survey of Big Five Personality index (BFI). This index included scales for conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, agreeability and openness.
The third included filling out a short questionnaire called Housemate scale, wherein the participants had to rate the writer of the email on the lines of friendliness, similarity with oneself, intelligence, trustworthiness, likeability and conscientiousness from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly disagree).
The participants were also asked if they noticed any grammatical or typographical errors in the email and how that affected them. The responses varied from not being bothered about the errors to being highly disturbed by them.
On studying these subjects' behavioral traits, it was arrived at that the extroverts noticed fewer mistakes while the introverts, on the other hand, were conscientious and highly sensitive to these errors.
This is the first ever study that shows how a personality trait or an inherent behavior affects someone's interpretation of language. It is also an example of how people judge other people socially.
The findings suggest that introverts generally prefer not to deviate from the convention of perfection, whereas, outgoing people generally take everything in stride and do not really bother with details.
Photo: Derek Mindler | Flickr
