Lyngo Lab

Typos Hurt Your Image

Typos are hard to avoid. But those tiny errors pack a punch. Across multiple experiments, we’ve found that grammatical errors ranging from bad sentence structure to the misuse of there, their, and they’re make us look less competent. In this study, we consider how typos might affect other outcomes in a professional context.

📚 Experiment:

400 participants from Amazon MTurk were presented with a work email from a hypothetical boss, John, containing either four minor typos or pristine correctness, randomly assigned. Participants then rated how smart, nice, likable, and trustworthy John seemed using a 1-7 scale.

📊 Results:

Typos do matter, and their impact on perception is palpable. Making four minor typos resulted in a 21.5% reduction in perceived intelligence, a 5.7% decrease in perceived niceness, a 9.0% decline in likability, and an 11.2% drop in perceived trustworthiness. The effect on perceived intelligence was particularly significant, as it was in our previous studies, and all outcomes were consistent across participants’ ages and genders.

🗝️ Conclusion:

The occasional typo might seem innocuous, but this study underscores the importance of vigilance, especially when aiming to project professionalism and intelligence. Before hitting send, take that extra moment to ensure your messages are not only content-rich but also free of inadvertent errors.

Emojis are everywhere. They're used across social media, texts, emails, and other digital mediums now more than ever before. But how does emoji use affect your image? Does the age or gender of the emoji user or reader matter? What about context? Might perceptions differ in an email vs. social media?

We conducted a randomized experiment with 1,200 people to find out. Participants read a short block of text that either contained a smiley face emoji 😊 or did not contain the emoji, randomly assigned. We also randomized whether the context was a Facebook post or an email, and whether the gender of the sender was “Jon” or “Jen.”

As it turns out, using the smiley face emoji didn't matter much. It generated only a trivial increase (2%) in how nice our person seemed, which was mainly driven by our female sender (4%). The findings were surprising, in that there actually wasn't much nuance in how emojis affect one's image.

📝 “There” Misuse: How It Affects Your Image

How many times have you come across someone using the wrong “there” in an email or a social media post? Using it correctly may be more important than we think. According to an experiment we conducted with over 1,000 people, misusing the common homophones of “there,” “their,” and “they’re” significantly hurt a person’s perceived intelligence.

🔍 The Experiment

We designed a randomized controlled trial in which 1,200 people read a fictitious email or social media post. Unbeknownst to participants, we varied whether the words “there,” “their,” and “they’re” were used correctly or incorrectly. After reading the email or post, participants rated how intelligent the sender seemed using a 1-7 survey scale.

📊 The Results

Misusing “there” variants caused our writer’s perceived intelligence to drop by 15.7%, with an average rating of 3.91 relative to 4.64 on a 1-7 scale (p < 0.001). The effect equates to about half of a standard deviation, a fairly sizeable effect by psychology standards.

🧠 Bulleted Lists & Memory

Can text formatting actually help us remember important information? For example, might bulleted lists in an email aid our colleagues’ recall of key details. The results of an experiment we ran with 400 people suggest it can.

📚 Experiment

We had 400 people participate in a grocery list activity in which they chose to place three common grocery items (bread, apples, and oranges) into either a paper or a plastic bag. Unbeknownst to participants, we randomized whether the three items were presented in a bulleted list or in-paragraph, as it was actually the items, not the bag choice, that was the focus of our study. Later, we asked participants to recall as many of the three grocery items as possible.

📊 Results

The bulleted list actually helped people remember. Participants in the bulleted list group recalled 2 items, on average, while those in the in-paragraph group only recalled 1.5 items. That’s a 33% increase (p < 0.001). Participants also recalled all three items more frequently with a bulleted list (34.5% vs. 22.7%).

🗝️ Conclusion

So, if you’re trying to help others (or yourself) remember important information:

• Use a bulleted list