The Secret Cause of Flame Wars

The reason for this is egocentrism, or the difficulty some people have detaching themselves from their own perspective, says Epley. In other words, people aren’t that good at imagining how a message might be understood from another person’s perspective. —Stephen LeahyThe Secret Cause of Flame Wars (Wired)

2 thoughts on “The Secret Cause of Flame Wars

  1. I think there was an article on slashdot today about how people only correctly decipher someone else’s tone through an email…

  2. I confess to a big “huh?” when I read this article. Of course, the psychology is applicable everywhere, but he’s talking about email and specifically business email. How often do flame wars erupt in email? Is it even a flame war if it’s between just two people? Is the author using the term without any knowledge of discussion board flame wars? A totally trivial problem, I suppose. It just happened to bug me.

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