Deceptive E-mail

You already know that it's hard to discern tone from an e-mail. But apparently, it's even harder to discern the truth from an e-mail.

In a New York Times blog post, Tara Parker-Pope describes a study on e-mail honesty and discovered that groups of people asked to communicate information were more truthful in written communication than in typed e-mail communication:

There is a growing concern in the workplace over e-mail communications, and it comes down to trust,” said Liuba Belkin, a co-author of the study and an assistant professor of management at Lehigh University, in a press release. “You’re not afforded the luxury of seeing nonverbal and behavioral cues over e-mail. And in an organizational context, that leaves a lot of room for misinterpretation and, as we saw in our study, intentional deception.

The phone call and face-to-face meeting may need a comeback.