By Lily Cao, Undergraduate Research Assistant

Marlow, Lacerenza, and Iwig’s study manipulates gender, closing salutation, and sending method in an experimental design in order to determine whether these factors influence the first impressions a sender makes through email.

The inspiration for the study comes from technology’s increasingly essential role in people’s everyday lives. Not only do people use technology at home for keeping up with friends and browsing entertainment, but people also use technology in professional contexts. Specifically, a lot of communication in the workplace happens in emails through computer-mediated communication or CMC for short. As of recent, most relevant studies have examined how performance on different tasks vary based on using face-to-face communication versus CMC.

Marlow, Lacerenza, and Iwig’s study aims to extend existing literature about CMC by understanding the various aspects of CMC that influence the information receivers can garner. The researchers explored aspects of emails that affect first impressions of professionalism, competence, and positive or negative affect. Two theories that informed them of the variables are textual primacy theory and status characteristics theory. The former suggests that textual cues may strongly influence impressions of a target beyond the influence of photographic cues; the latter suggests that perceptions of competence may develop based on outward traits of a person, such as gender, and the associated stereotypes with those traits (for example, women are often assumed to be more communal than men).

The study sampled 288 undergraduates through an Experimetrix survey, and the researchers used a 2X2X4 between-subjects design, creating 16 potential conditions. Gender had two levels: male and female. Email sending mode had two levels: iPhone and no iPhone. Closing salutation had 4 levels: “Thank you”, “Thanks!”, “Best”, or no salutation. Ultimately, in order to analyze survey responses, the researchers conducted a multivariate ANOVA in SPSS to assess the significance of gender, email sending mode, and closing salutation individually as well as the interactions all three on first impressions of professionalism, competence, and affect.

The results demonstrated that sending mode had no significant effect on first impressions of professionalism, competence, and affect. Marlow, Lacerenza, and Iwig postulate that this is due to people’s acceptance of technology’s integrated role in their lives and how computers and phones are used for the same communication purposes. The analyses also revealed that females are generally perceived to be more professional than males when sending business emails, except for when the interaction between gender and closing salutation was considered. Participants viewed females to be less professional when “Thanks!” was the closing line. Lastly, the results illuminated that participants often perceived “Thanks!” to indicate positive affect.

The real-world applications of this study involve organizational contexts and the communication practices that take place within them. The findings suggest that while sending mode may not influence portrayals of professionalism, competence, and affect, gender and closing salutations do have some influence. People should be mindful of how their personal characteristics and word choice may affect the first impressions they give their potential employers and coworkers.

Marlow, Lacerenza, and Iwig state that although their study addresses a gap in the literature pertaining to how cues within an email affect the perceptions of the sender, many future avenues of research still exist. Researchers can explore other cues like grammatical errors and email length. Moreover, this experimental design can be replicated in multiple cultures to determine if cultural differences impact the influence that different cues exert on first impressions of the sender. The impact of digital cues in communication will only become more important with continued technological innovation.

Works Cited:

Marlow, S. L., Lacerenza, C. N., & Iwig, C. (2018). The Influence of Textual Cues on First Impressions of an Email Sender. Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, 81(2), 149-166. https://doi.org/10.1177/2329490617723115