New research out of the American Psychological Association made the revelation when analysing 5,300 people across eight studies, to find that those who used abbreviations were considered less sinceres.
The study was conducted by David Fang at Stanford University and colleagues at the University of Toronto to explore the impact of abbreviations in different texting scenarios. They asked participants to rate the sincerity of text messages, with and without abbreviations, and explain how likely they were to respond to each.
Next, they analysed messages on the Discord social messaging platform, during an online speed-dating experiment, and from the dating app, Tinder.
In the experiments, texters who used abbreviations received shorter and fewer responses and were less likely to receive contact information from the other texter.
“Abbreviations make senders seem less sincere and recipients less likely to write back,” they continued.
“These negative effects arise because abbreviations signal a lower level of effort from the sender.”
“While our overall results on age were mixed, it’s clear that younger people are not particularly fond of abbreviations, though the strength of this aversion may vary by age,” Fang said.
“In daily interactions, we often encounter people who could be considered good texters or poor texters.”
“We thought texters might like abbreviations because it would convey an informal sense of closeness, so we were surprised that abbreviations elicited negative perceptions about people who use them.”
The findings were published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, with the authors explaining that “while abbreviations can save time and effort, our research suggests that they may also hinder effective communication and negatively influence interpersonal perceptions.”
“Abbreviations make senders seem less sincere and recipients less likely to write back,” the authors write.
“These negative effects arise because abbreviations signal a lower level of effort from the sender.”
The researchers explored the topic of abbreviations to discover whether they conveyed exactly the same meaning as the full word, but found they had interesting effects on recipients.
