Text messages can seem cold and distant when you end sentences with hard punctuation. Or Warmmm And Bubbbbbly when you use expressive language and emotional affect through spelling distortions and emojis! 🤗 But how much happiness should you convey in your messages and what are the effects of over doing the excitement?
Well, we had this question too and found out some interesting things about the way overt happiness can effect your recipients’ perception of you. You can intuit that displaying some happiness can help people feel comfortable and open, but if you over do it it can have some pretty bad outcomes. At least according to a study, an over abundance of happiness is actually not such a good thing. If a person comes across too bubbly and happy others get some extra information about you such as that you may be naive or purposely ignoring negative information 1. What’s so bad about that? Well, your recipient is more likely to exploit your naivety and may be more likely to take advantage of you in negotiation.
So be happy and open 🤗,but don’t over do it or you may be exploited or at least off-putting. What are you thoughts on expression through text message and writing? What’s appropriate and when? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
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Footnotes
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Barasch, Alixandra, et al. “Bliss Is Ignorance: How the Magnitude of Expressed Happiness Influences Perceived Naiveté and Interpersonal Exploitation.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, vol. 137, 01 Nov. 2016, pp. 184-206. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1016/j.obhdp.2016.05.006. ↩