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Bulletin ofThe Faculty of Psychological & Physical Science, No. 11 , 57- 66, 2015
Irony and the Sender ラs Overconfidence:
Effects of Contextual Factors and Emoticons in E-mail
Shinichiro OKAMOTO
Two experiments were conducted to investigate the sender's overconfidence in the communication ofirony.
The sender-participants produced messages of irony in simulated E-mail communication situations and subseュ
quently speculated whether the receiver would interpret them as irony or sincere praise. Receiver-participants
were asked to infer the real intention of the senders. Experiment 1 (N= 154) revealed that the overconfidence
was reduced when the sender was informed of the receiver's ignorance after but not before producing a mesュ
sage. Experiment 2 (N=68) showed that the availability of emoticons did not change the magni印de of overconュ
fidence because it heightened not only the receiver's real accuracy but also the sender's expectation about the
receiver's accuracy. Some implications ofthe experiments were discussed.
Keywords: irony, overconfidence, the ilusion oftransparency, E-mail
Daily communication is not always success孔.t1. What the
sender has intended to transmit may not be understood by
the receiver as it was intended. Furthermore, it is sometimes
the case that the sender does not notice his/her failure in
communication and believes that his/her meaning or emoュ
tion has been understood well by the receiver. The existence
of such phenomena, which 1 refer to as “ the sender's overュ
confidence" here, has been repOlied by several researchers
(Keysar, 1994; Keysar & Henly, 2002; Kruger Epley, Parkュ
er, & Ng, 2005). ln this paper 1 repoli two experiments which investigated
some factors inf1uencing the sender's overconfidence. ln
these experiments, 1 was concerned with the communicaュ
tion of irony in quasi E-mail situations. ln Experiment 1, 1
examined the effects of the sender's expectation about the
receiver's contexts. ln Experiment 2, 1 addressed myself to
the roles of emoticons in messages. Through these experiュ
ments, 1 intended to clarify some possible mechanisms unュ
derlying the overconfidence phenomenon.
Previous studies demonstrating overconfidence phenom-
ena
The sender's overconfidence has been demonstrated in
several experiments. ln Keysar and Henly (2002), a speakュ
er-participant read an ambiguous sentence (e.g. , Angela
killed the man with the gun) to a hearer-participant; alュ
though the disambiguating context was shown to the speak-
er only, the speaker estimated that the hearer would il1fer
the meaning of the sentence more accurately than the hearer
achmlly did.
The emergence of overconfidence is not confined to the
communication of sentence meaning. Keysar (1994) found
this phenomenon in remarks of irony (sarcasm). ln his exュ
periments, participants were presented with a scenario in
which the information about the target of evaluation (the
restaurant was bad or good) and the sender's positive reュ
mark (e.g. , [the restaurant was] “ well marvellous, just marュ
vellous") were shown. Although the receiver in this scenario
was placed in the standpoint unable to know about the inュ
f0I111ation of the target, the participants judged that the 1・e
ceiver would take the remark as sarcastic when the situation
was negative compared with when it was positive.
Causes of overconfidence
Why does the sender's overconfidence emerge? As a maュ
jor cause of overconfidence, Kruger et al. (2005) pointed
out the egocentricity of the sender, that is, the difficulty for
the sender to infer how stimuli are evaluated by others who
do 110t c0I1U11and the sender's privileged viewpoint (p. 926).
Let's assume Ken sends a message to Naomi. In order to
communicate his own intention successfully, Ken must
compose a message by taking into consideration Naomi's
contexts or viewpoint including her knowledge and asュ
sumptions. However a person tends to have an illusion that
ホDepartment of Psychology, Faculty of Psychological and Physical Science, Aichi Gakuin University, E-mail: [email protected]
-57-
Shinichiro OKAMOTO
his/her own inner states are known to others, more so than
they ac印ally are (the illusion of transparency: Gilovich,
Savitsky & Medvec, 1998). Such an illusion might inf1uュ
ence Ken's judgement about the communality of his and
Naomi's contextual knowledge and as a result, he might
formulate a message from his egocentric viewpoint (Kruger
et al., 2005). The matter is discussed further as fol1ows (Epュ
ley, Keysar, Van Boven, & Gilovich, 2004; Keysar & BaIT,
2002): in order to speculate on another's viewpoint, the
sender first employs his/her own viewpoint as an anchor,
and endeavours to fill the gap between the sender him/herュ
self and the receiver gradually (the anchoring and adjustュ
men川1t heu山111βS坑凶tic (Tve白I
S乱uにch adjus坑tment臼s a創re repea剖ted until the sende白r thinks the
gap has been eliminated, they are often insufficient, resultュing in the sender's egocentric bias.
Irony and overconfidence
In this paper, 1 focused on irony. Although there are var・1-
ous variants in verbal irony (see, Gibbs, 2000; AUTHOR,
2007) , typical remarks of irony contain the reversal of emoュ
tion. In these remarks, the sender expresses positively in orュ
der to transmit the receiver his/her negative emotion about
some target (a person, a group, an institution, and so on).
For example, Ken says to Naomi when Taro has sung poorュ
ly, Taro is a splendid singer.
In the present experiments , as this example, 1 employed
situations in which a sender communicates a remark of iroュ
ny to a receiver about a target person.
In remarks of irony, due to the reversal of emotion, it will
be 1 ikely that, while N aomi has interpreted the message as
being literal praise, Ken considers that Naomi has successュ
向lly understood his intention of irony, i.e. , he exhibits a
sender's overconfidence. Verbal features , such as exaggeraュ
tions and overpoIiteness , as well as nonverbal features such
as mmatural vocal tones or unnahlral facial expressions can
be used to express the insincerity of the communication
(AUTHOR, 2007; Utsumi, 2000) , heightening the nuances
of irony. However, these feahlres might not be sufficient in
preventing Naomi 's misunderstanding and Ken might not
able to notice that his elaboration of the message-in order
to signal irony-was unsuccessful (i.e. , the sender's overュ
confidence ).
The emergence of overconfidence will be inf1uenced by
the degree of agreement of contextual information about the
target person possessed by both Ken and Naomi; furtherュ
more, when their contexts are not shared, whether or not
and when Ken acknowledges the difference will be a crucial
factor. Depending on how Ken assesses Naomi's context,
he might use insincere expressions to signal his ironic in-
tention differently and his estimation of the communicabiliュ
ty of the messages wiI1 be also different.
E-mail and overconfidence
In the present experiments, the sender-participants themュ
selves made ironic remarks in E-mail situations. Exchanges
of information by E-mail, especially with mobile phones,
have prevailed among young people in Japan; they very
frequently send various messages induding those concernュ
ing trif1ing ma仕ers. In addition, Kruger et al., (2005) found
that compared with face-to-face or voice-only communicaュ
tion, the senders of E-mails tend to be overconfident in their
success. They demonstrated this in the remarks of irony
(sarcasm) , as well as sadness, anger, and so on. So research
on E-mail communication should have a significance of its
own.
The experiments in this paper were motivated by Kruger
et al. (2005). However, 1 have added considerable modificaュ
tions to the procedures of Kruger et al. While the pa1iiciュ
pants in Kruger et al. 's experiments were allowed to make
ironic remarks freely, participants in this paper experiments
were asked to make remarks for the material given by the
experimenter. These procedures made it possible to examine
strictly the effects of the contextual information owned by
the sender and the receiver.
Furthennore, in Kruger et al. (2005)'s experiments, sendュ
er-participants were instructed not to use emoticons. Kruger
et al. l11aintain that overcon日dence el11erged in their followュ
up experiment in which the use of el11oticons was allowed.
However, they did not report any specific data. In Experiュ
ment 1 of this paper, participants were allowed to use
emoticons if they wish. In Experiment 2, the effects of
availability of emoticons were examined.
Experiment 1
Experiment 1 investigated the inf1uences of the sender's
assumption about the receiver's contexts. As a starting point
for the research, 1 purported to confirm the existence of the
overconfidence phenomenon in remarks of irony. The hyュ
pothesis is as follows:
1-1. In general , the sender will expect that the receiver
can estimate the sender's intention more accurately than the
receiver's 印刷al perforl11ance (the sender's overconfiュ
dence).
For its main purpose, Experiment 1 introduced four conュ
ditions: in the three of them (non-shared), it is only the
sender that is given the information about the target people.
These conditions were different from each other regarding
how the sender was inform
-58-
Irony and Sender's Overconfdence
Table 1 Informational state of the sender and the receiver (Experiment 1)
Sender's expectation about the receiver's Receiver's actual
knowledge about context
Before completion
Correct Non-shared
Modified Shared
Incorrect Shared
Shared Shared
In the conect information condition, the sender was corュ
rectly infonned about the receiver's contexts from the beュ
ginning (i .e. , the receiver would be ignorant about the target
people 's situations).
In the incorrect-information condition, the sender was
misinfol111ed throughout the experiment that the receiver
would be given the same infonnation about the target peoュ
ple's situations as the sender. In the modified-information
condition, the sender was fir計 misinformed about the reュ
celver・ 's context as in the incolTect condition and was ‘de
briefed' about the receiver's ignorance only after he/she had
completed the messages
Finally, as a control condition, the shared-context condiュ
tion was established. In this condition, the receiver was givュ
en the same information as the sender about the target's
ability and the sender was notified correctly that the receiv-
er would be given such information.
Ta油l巾ble 1 s乱印umma訂rises the sende白r'ヲ、s and r印ec印elve町rγ,、s e侃xpe民ct阻a
tion about infoαrm
be the degree of overconf白idence in each of the conditions?
In Figure 1, for the illustration, predicted values of the deュ
gree of the receiver's accuracy (grey bars) and the sender's
estimation (dark bars) are shown, as well as the difference
between these two values, or in other words , the predicted
degree ofthe sender's overconfidence (white bars).
It is possible that Ken, the sender, is trapped in his overュconfidence at two stages of communication: when he proュ
duces and elaborates a message (the production stage) and
when he evaluates the success of communication after comュ
pleting a message (the evaluation stage). We can assess, in
each of the experimental conditions , to what extent the
overconfidence can be reduced (or not) in these two stages.
For the three conditions in which the context is not
shared, Naomi has some difficulty making accurate inferュ
ences. In the correct information condition, Ken recognises
Naomi's context from the beginning; he has opportunities
to prevent the overconfidence in both of the production and
evaluation stages. In the former stage, he can heighten Naoュ
mi 's accuracy by the elaboration of a message using verbal
the context
After completion
Non-shared Non-shared
Non-shared Non-shared
Shared Non-shared
Shared Shared
59
• Sender
>J Receiver
口 Overconfidence
Correct Modified Incorrect Shared
Figure 1 Predictions of the results (Experiment 1)
signals and other marks such as emoticons (Kumon-Nakaュ
mura et al. , 1995; AUTHOR, 2007; Utsumi , 2000). In the
latter stage, he can make a cautious judgement about her
ability to recognise his intention. Although various difficulュ
ties might exist in these two stages, the oppor・札ll1 ities to
prevent his overconfidence are considered to be largest
among the three non-shared conditions.
In the incorrect-information condition, Ken would expect Naomi's high accuracy. He has no opportunity to improve
his message in the production stage nor to downgrade his
optimistic expectation about her in the evaluation stage.
In the modified-infonnation condition, Ken in the proュ
duction stage is ignorant of N aomi 's ignorance; so he canュ
not accommodate his words or other signals for N aomi.
Therefore the improvement of the latter's accuracy cannot
be expected. On the other hand, in the evaluation stage, the
magnitude of Ken's overconfidence will decrease if he apュ
propriately can lower the estimation of Naomi's success by
assessing the difficulty of the message in the light of her
lack of contextual knowledge.
Finally, in the shared-context condition, the prediction is
simple. Naomi knows the target person's ability to the same
extent as Ken and he knows this fact. Therefore Naomi's
inference wilI be accurate and Ken's estimation about her
accuracy would be also accurate. As a result, his overconfiュ
dence wiU be at minimum.
The hypotheses were stated as follows:
Shinichiro OKAMOTO
1-2-2. The sender's estimation of the receiver's accuracy
wiU be highest in the sha1'ed-context condition and in the
incorrect-information condition; it will be lowest in the
modified同information condition.
1-2-2. The receiver's achlal accuracy wiU be highest in
the shared-context condition. It will be lowest in the incorュ
rect condition and in the modified-information condition.
1-2-3. As a 1'esult, the sende1'冶 overconfidence will inュ
crease in the following order: the shared-context condition,
the correct information condition, the modified-infOlmation
condition, and the incorrect-information condition.
Method
Participants. One hundred and fifty four undergraduates
(64 males and 90 females) at Aichi Gakuin University parュ
ticipated in the experiment. All were native speakers of Japュ
anese. Their ages ranged from 18 to 25 (m= 18.61). Besides
these participants, the data of 13 sender-participants were excluded from the analysis because they could not be alloュ
cated to sender-receiver pairs or they did not follow the exュ
perimental procedures.
Design. The independent variables were the 1'ole of the
communicator (sender vs. l'印.右ec印elve口1'), and the contexts (いC∞Oωr
r児.右ecはt-info印rτ.'m
tion叱1しラ and sha剖red-cont旬ext). The contexts were manipulated
between participant pairs.
Stimulus. Sixteen story frames were created. 1n each of
these frames , a target person's performance or knowledge
was described as being poo1' (e.g. Yumi is igno1'ant of Japa目
nese histo1'Y) , togethe1' with an example of a (superficially)
positive comment on Yumi 's performance (Yumi is, as
might have been expected a shldent majoring histo1'Y, very
knowledgeable about Japanese histo1'y. I have found she is
quite familiar with the history of the Heian Period) (See
Appendix). Corresponding to each of the St01γframes , the
sihlation in which the target ヲ s perfOlmance was depicted as
being good (e.g. , Yumi is knowledgeable about Japanese
history) was also established; in such a si印ation , the sender
l11ade rema1'ks of sincere praise.
The sixteen stories were divided into two groups of eight
stories. Each of the questionnaires consisted of one of the
sto1'y groups; for each of irony and p1'aise, four stories we1'e
assigned in four counterbalanced ways. The stories were
ordered in two counterbalanced l11anners.
The praise sihlations were included f1'om the nature of
this expe1'iment that the participants were 1'equi1'ed to judge
whether rema1'ks a1'e felt to be irony or since1'e praise. It
would be possible to t1'eat irony vs. p1'aise as another indeュ
pendent variable. However, fo1' the 1'el11a1'ks of sincere of
praise the degrees of overconfidence were ve1'y low in all
conditions. So I excluded it f1'om the analyses.
Man伊ulation 0.1 the contexts. In the correct-inforl11ation,
incorrect-infonnation, and modified-inforl11ation conditions,
the receive1'-participants were not given any information
about each of the target people's performance; within these
conditions , the infonnation about the receiver's context
given to the sender-participants was manipulated. In the
correct-information condition, the sender-participants were
infOlmed that the receiver would have no knowledge about
each target pe1'son's ability. ln the incorrect-information and
modified-info1'mation conditions, befo1'e they produced
messages, they we1'e told that the 1'eceiver would know each
target person三 real ability; however, only in the modifiedュ
information condition, after they completed messages and
before they began ratingラ they were told that the receiver
achlally would not be info1'med about anything regarding
each of the target persons. (After the experiment, it was exュ
plained to the participants in the incorrect-information conュ
dition that their messages had actually been shown to reュ
ceiver-participants who were not knowledgeable about the
target persons' ability.)
In the shared-context conditionラ each of the receiver-parュ
ticipants was given the same type of infonnation about each
of the target persons as was given to the sender-participant
paired with him/her. The sender田participants in this condiュ
tion were infol111ed that the receive1' would be told about
each target pe1'son's real ability. (see Table 1)
Procedure. The sende1やarticipants were asked to rewrite
by hand the example as irony or as since1'e praise assuming
to be E目mail messages to thei1' friends; they were allowed to
include emoticons in their messages if they wished. Then
the participants rated their judgements on how the receivers
would interpret their remarks. They indicated their estimaュ
tions on scales ranging 白・om “(the receiver will) probably
recognise it to be irony (1)" to “probably recognise it to be
sincere praise (6)."
The 1'eceiver-pa1'ticipants were shown messages w1'itten
by one of the pa1'ticipants1) (and, in the sha1'ed-context conュ
dition, the inf01111ation about the target people's ability); they we1'e asked to assume that the messages had come
from their f1'iends as E-mails. Then the participants rated
thei1' judgements of the sende1"s intention fo1' each of the
l11essages. Each 1'eceive1やa1'ticipant was asked to rate each
sende1' 's messages on a scale ranging from “ (I feel it) is
probably irony (1)"to "p1'obably since1'e praise (6)."
Results
The following two measures were calculated in order to
assess the degree ofthe sender's overconfidence.
First, if the 凶i時 value of a remark was three or less (i.e. ,
-60-
Irony and Sender's Overconfdence
Tab!e 2 The means of correct answers ofthe sender and the receiver in each ofthe conditions
(Experiment 1)
Correct Modified IncolTect Shared
Sender 3.53 2.58 3.76 3.78
(.70*) (1.26) (.54) (.55)
Receiver 2.32 2.26 2.38 3.72
(1.25) (1.15) ( 1.24) (.67)
中The numbers in the parentheses indicate SDs
1ess than the midpoint), it was judged that the sender in- 4.00
fe1'1'ed that the receive1' would feel the remark to be irony; 3.50
for the sende1' (for the ratings ofthe sende1'-participants), or 3.00
the receiver felt the remark to be i1'ony (for the 1'atings of
the 1'eceiver-pa1'ticipants). We refer to this as “ a conect anュ
swer" for convenience. The numbers of the correct answers
were counted for each of the senders or receivers and we1'e
compared across the conditions. The value can be ranged
自'om zero to four as regards each participant.
The second measure was the degree of accuracy. F or this
purpose, the distance from the midpoint ofthe sca1e (3.5-x)
was calculated. These values were summed fo1' four situaュ
tions. Thus, the degree of accuracy can range 白"01TI -10 to
+10.
For each of the two measures, a ro1e x context ANOVA
was conducted.2)
Correct answers. The average numbers for each of the
conditions a1'e shown in Table 2 and Figure 2.
When we compare the numbers of correct answers
among the conditions, fo1' the sender, it is lower in the modュ
ified-information condition than in the other conditions; for
the receiver, it is higher in the sha1'ed-context condition than
in the other conditions.3)
Role x context ANOVAs were conducted. The main efュ
fects of role (F1(1 ,73)=32.31 , MSE=.65; F2(1 ,15)=3 1.67 ,
MSE=.036; ps<.OOl) and context (F1(3 ,73)=8.89 ,
MSE=1.25; F2 (1, 15)=19.53 , MSE=.031; ps<.OOl) and the
role by context interaction (F1(3 ,73)=6.30 , MSE=.65 ,
p=.OOl; F2(1, 15)= 10.13 , MSE=.019, p<.OOl) were a11 sig-
111白cant.
When we see the 1'esults for each of the conditions sepa-
2.50
2.00
1.50
1.00
0.50
0.00
Correct Modified Incorrect Shared
• Sender Receiver
ロ Overconfidence
Figure 2 The numbers of correct answers (Experiment 1)
rately, in the correct-information and incorrect-information
conditions , the sende1"s overconfidence emerged nearly to
the same extent. On the other hand, in the shared-context
and modified-information conditions, the sender's overconュ
fidence did not appear, although the cause for i江t was d出if百fe町r
ent仁: while the fo白rm
C句y 0ぱf infel白r芯百e白nce, the latter was brought about by the
accuracy in the sender's estimation ofthe receiver's low acュ
curacy.
Statistically, the effects of role were significant in the corュ
rect-information and incorrect-information conditions (Corュ
rect-information: F J (1 , 18)= 15 .11 , MSE=. 92 , p<.OO 1;
F2 (1, 15)=66.3 7, MSE=.O 11 ,p<.OO 1; Modified-information:
F 1 (1 ,18)= 1.42, MSE=.67 , ns; F2( 1,15)= 1.72, MSE=.044, ns; Incorrect-information: F 1(1 ,20)=25.87 , MSE=.77 , p<.OOI;
F2( 1, 15)=29.53 , MSE=.031 , p<.OO 1; Shared-context:
F1 (1, 17)<1,MSE=.20 ,ns; F2(1, 15)<1,MSE=.009,ns) .4)
Degreω of accuracy. The results of the degrees of accuraュ
cy are shown in Table 3. The patterns ofthe resuJts were sim-
Table 3 The means ofaccuracy ofthe sender and the receiver in each ofthe conditions (Experiment 1)
Correct Modified IncolTect Shared
Sender 3.89 1.26 4.81 4.44
(2.08* (2.86) (2.02) (2.75)
Receiver 1.05 1.11 1.71 7.06
(5.04) (3.78) (5.02) (3.15)
*The l1umbers in the parentheses indicate SDs
-61-
Shinichiro OKAMOTO
ilar to those of correct answers. The main effects of context
(Fl(3 ,73)=9.51 , MSE=14.31; F2(3 ,45)=26.94, MSE=.28;
ps<.OOI), and the role by context interaction (Fl(3 ,73)=6.33 ,
MSE=10.67 , p=.OOI; F2(3 ,45)=13 .33 , MSE=.25, p<.OOI)
were significant.
Discussion
We can evaluate the hypotheses comparing Figure 1,
with Figure 2. Supporting Hypothesis 1-1 , the sender's
overconfidence emerσed in two ofthe conditions. b
1 would like to take a closer look at Hypotheses 1-2-1 ,
1-2-2 , and 1-2-3. The results of the shared-context condiュ
tion were as expected: the receiver's inference was accurate
and the sender's overconfidence did not appear. 1n the inュ
cOITect-infonnation condition, because the sender was misュinformed that the receiver was knowledgeable about the
target person's ability, there should be no surprise that we
confirmed the emergence of the sender 's overconfidence.
As regards the other two conditions , the results were unュ
expected. Contrary to the hypotheses , in the cOITect-inforュ
mation condition , the sender's expectation was not signifiュ
cantly lower and the receiver's success was not significantly
higher compared with the incolTect-inf0l�11ation condition;
therefore the level of overconfidence did not differ between
the two conditions.
1n the modified-infol111ation condition, the sender's exュ
pectation about the receiver's success was low. Although
this was in the p1'edicted direction , the degree of decrease
was very la1'ge and, as a result, the magnitude of ove1'confiュ
dence he1'e almost disappea1'ed. These results in the COITectュ
and modified-infonnation conditions are noteworthy.
The following facto1's could have been involved as causes
of unexpected results in the COITect-and modified-informaュ
tion conditions. First , in the present results , we can see the sende1"s st1'ong tendency to produce a message and evaluate
its communicative success f1'om his/her own viewpoint only
(Kruger et al. , 2005).
1n the cOITect-information condition, the overconfidence
emerged to a simila1' extent in the incorrect-information
condition whe1'e the sender had not recognised the receivュ
er's ignorance. Judging from the receive1"s level of accuraュ
cy, the quality of the messages has sca1'cely imp1'oved 丘om
the incor1'ect-information to the conect-information condiュ
tion in the production stage. Furthennore , the sender 's high
score in the cOlTect-info1'mation condition suggests that it
has been difficult fo1' him/he1' to acknowledge the low qual-
ity of the message in the evaluation stage.
Whileラ in the correct-infonnation condition, the sender has a realisation that he/she himself produced a message
with the knowledge of contexts, in the modified-inf0l�11a-
- 62
tion condition, he/she lacks it. The large differences of the
overconfidence between the two conditions suggest that the
sender's actual feeling that he/she has produced a message
taking into consideration the 1'eceiver's contexts might be
an important factor fo1' his/her overconfidence to emerge.
This is consistent with the results shown by some previous
experiments that a bystander given the same information as
the sender is less likely to be trapped into overconfidence
than the sender him/he1'self (Gilovich et al., 1998; Keysar &
Henly, 2002).5)
Another possible factor is the inf1uence of people's eveュ
ryday expe1'iences. 1n everyday communication, except for the cases when there is direct feedback from the receiver, it is not uncommon that the sender 1'ecognises the 1'eceive1"、S
t f白ailu山lre 111 U山111吋de白r司and出ing only when the sende白r notices t出ha剖
the recei竹vぽ明e白r'、s contexts ar閃ed出if百fe白rent f企旨凶omwha剖t he or she has
imagined during the production stage, as in the 1110difiedュinfo1'mation condition of this experiment. People, as sendュers, may have been imp1'essed rather keenly by expe1'iences
like this in their own miscommunication. 1n situations in
which they do not notice the mis1'ecognition of the context, it will be often the case they end up considering that they
have succeeded in the com111unication, even if they actually have failed in it, as the correct-infonnation condition. So as
far as they know the receiver's context, they may become confident in the success of c0111munication. People ヲ s daily
experiences like this may have also played a role for the
differences between correct-and modified-information conュ
ditions.
Experiment 2
Effects of emoticons
Experiment 2 approached the ove1'confidence phenomeュ
non in the light of the effects of emoticons in E-mail mesュ
sages. 1 manipulated experimentally the sender's availabiliュ
ty of emoticons
The results of the correct-infonnation condition in Exュ
periment 1 suggest that, even when the sender acknowledgュes that the receiver's context is diffe1'ent from the sender's,
the sender has difficulty in taking this into conside1'ation.
Does this mean that, in such a si印ation, various 111easures
to elaborate a message are totally useless for the prevention
of overconfidence? 1n E-mail messages by mobile phones, people, especially a younger generation, use a variety of
emoticons (face 111a1'ks and so fo1'ce) which are not used in
t1'aditional w1'itten communication. It has been pointed out
that these emoticons are, as supplements to verbal expresュsions, utilised to t1'ansmit the sender's emotion, like facial expressions, ges印1'es , or vocal tones in face-to-face interac-
Irony and Sender's Overconfdence
tions (Miyake, 2005; Nakamam, 2005); in irony, these
emoticons are expected to play a role to signal the sender's
ironic inten1. Are these emoticons ineffective for the deュ
crease of overconfidence?
1n Experiment 1 of this paper, 1 allowed the participants
to use emoticons 凸'ee1y and confirmed the overconfidence
phenomena. Kmger et al. (2005) also maintain that overュ
confidence emerged in their follow-up experiment in which
the use of emoticons was allowed. A1though these results
may show that emoticons are not powerful for the prevenュ
tion of overconfidence, an unsettled question still remains.
It is possible that the magniれlde of the sender 's expectation
of the receiver's success , the receiver's actual success , and
the magnitude of overestimation might be different when
emoticons are availab1e than when they are no1. Experiment
2 addressed this issue by directly manipulating the avai1aュ
bi1ity of emoticons.
How will the overconfidence of the sender change due to
the use of emoticons? The degree of the overconfidence
when emoticon is availab1e is dependent on how the sendュ
er's expectation about the receiver's accuracy will be. If the
sender's expectation in the emoticon condition compared
with the non-emoticon condition does not increase in proュ
portion with the receiver's rea1 accuracy, the overconfiュ
dence, even if it emerges, will be smaller in the former than
in the latter condition. On the other hand, if the increase of
the sender's expectation exceeds the receiver's rea1 accuraュ
cy, the overconfidence will be 1arger in the fonner condi-tlOn.
Here we have two opposing hypotheses:
2a. The availability of emoticons will restrain the sendュ
er's overconfidence.
2b. The availability of emoticons will inflate the sender's
overconfidence.
Experiment 2 investigated which hypothesis would be
appropnate.
Method
Participants. Sixty-eight undergraduates (14 males and
54 females) at Aichi Gakuin University participated in the
experimen1. All were native speakers of Japanese; their ages
ranged 合om 20 to 23 (m=21.17) Besides these participants,
one undergraduate's data were exc1uded from the analysis
because of failure to follow instructions.
Design. The independent variables were the role of the
communicator (sender vs. receiver) and the availability of
emoticons (el110ticon vs. non-el110ticon). The latter variable
was l11anipulated within the participant pairs.
Stimulus. Twe1ve stories were created. The frames of the
stories were sil11ilar to those in Experiment 1. Each of the
questionnaires was consisted of these twelve stories; to
each of the emoticon conditions, three stories for irony and
three for sincere praise were assigned.
Eight cOl11binations of the stories with emoticon condiュ
tions and irony-praise sマtuations were established. For each
of the cOl11binations, four orders of the stories were estab-
lished in counterba1anced l11anners.
Procedure. Similar procedures to those in Experiment 1
were emp10yed with minor changes shown below.
As is in the cOITect-information condition in Experiment
1, the sender was told that the receiver had no information
about the ability ofthe target people. 1n the emoticon condiュ
tion the participants were allowed to freely use emoticons if
they wished; in the non-emoticon condition the senders
were asked to write remarks without using emoticons. Then
the participants rated their judgements on how the receivers
would interpret their remarks.
The receiver-participants rated their inference about the
sender's intention as in Experiment 1. They were not given
any information about the target peoples' ability.
Results
The numbers of correct answers were calculated as in
Experiment 1. They were based on the ratings for each of
the by emoticon conditions, in a possible range 白・omzero to
three. The results are shown in Table 4. First of all , as can be seen, the sender's expectation of correctness was higher
than the receiver's actual correctness, demonstrating the sender's overconfidence. Then the participants rated their
judgements on how the receivers would interpret their reュ
marks. While the availability of emoticons raised the reュ
ceiver・ 's performance, it also raised the sender's expecta-
Table 4 The means of correct answers in each of the conditions (Experiment 2)
Sender
ReceiveI・
Emoti
2.73
(.52*)
1.88
(l.54)
*The numbers in the parentheses indicate SDs.
63
Non-emoti
2.12
(l.05)
l.24
(l.03)
Shinichiro OKAMOTO
tions in similar degrees; so, on balance, emoticons were
ineffective for the curtailment of the sender's overconfiュ
dence.
A role x emoticon ANOVA was conducted.6) Both indeュ
pendent variables were regarded as repeated measures. The
main effects of role (FJ (1, 32)=26 .14, MSE=.94;
F2(1 ,11)=96.09 , MSE=.Oll; ps<.OOl) and emoticon
(FJ(1 ,32)=18.51 , MSE=.69 , p<.OOl; F2(l, 11)=17.39,
MSE=.029 , p=.OI) were significant. The role by emoticon
interaction was not significant (FJ (l,32)>1, MSE=.52;
F2 (1, 11)>1, MSE=.027; ns).
As for the degrees of accuracy calculated as Experiment 1,
the pattem of the results was exactly the same as that of
conect answers
Discussion
The sender's overconfidence was con自rmed in Experiュ
l11ent 2, as wel1. What was more important was the inf1uュ
ence of the availability of emoticons. It heightened not only
the receiver's accuracy but also the sender's expectation of
the accuracy to a similar extent, leaving the overconfidence
unchanged. Thus either Hypothesis 2a or 2b was not fully
supported.
In this experiment, the sender-participants in the emotiュ
con condition were allowed to use emoticons, but not obliュgated to do so. ln some cases, sender-participants did not
rely on the use of emoticons.7) If we confine the discussion
to the remarks in which el110ticons were actually used, how
effective were theyつ
Figure 3 shows the proportions of correct answers for reュ
marks with emoticons and those without emoticons in both
of the emoticon and non-emoticon conditions. We can see
that although the sender's overconfidence decreases by the
use of emoticons, it does not seem to have been extinュ
guished completely. 1 conducted ANOVA, t仕r了ea剖ting each r印.e
mark as a case町;111t出hi臼sANOVA, 印刷al use (vs. non-use) of
ハUハリ
Receiver
0.75
.Send巴1・
0.50
0.25
Emotion Non-Emotion
Figure 3 The proportions of COITect answers for remarks with
and without emoticons (Experiment 2)
emoticons , as well as role were regarded as independent
variables; the dependent variable was correctness or incorュ
rectness of the inference. Besides the effects of actual use
(F(1, 196)=24.27 , MSE=.23 , p<.OOl), the effects of role
were significant (F(1 ,196)=28.51 , MSE= .1 6, p<.OO l ),
showing the sender's overconfidence; however, the actual
use by role interaction did not reach the level of signifiュ
cance (F(1, 196)=3 .49, MSE=.16 ,p>.05).
We may conclude that, although emoticons and other
marks might be effective to some extent for the reduction of
the sender's overconfidence, they are not sufficient to reュ
move it completely. Fu山rt出he町rmo印re久, we mus坑t keep in mind
that this advantage of emoticons is useless for some senders
who are reluctant to use thel11 fu 11 y, as the main result of
this experiment has shown.
It is speculated that, for some emoticons, the degree of consensus as to their nuances has not been achieved yet,
due to the fact that sending E-mail via mobile phones is a
relatively new means of conU1lL1nication; if so, i抗t mi屯ght be
expected t出ha叫t the c∞onsensus will be fo白rm
札印lre , resulting in the extinction of overconfidence by the
use of emoticons.
However, in contemporary Japan, varieties of emoticons
(and other signals) available in mobile phones are expected
to increase further. This can be an obstacle to the achieveュ
ment of a consensus, and as a result, an obstacle to the deュ
crease in the sender's overconfidence. Follow-up studies on
this issue will be required.
Incidentally, Hancock (2004) conducted an experiment
on the communication of irony, cOl11paring Computer l11ediュ
ated communication (CMC) with face-to-face communicaュ
tion (Hancock, 2004). In Hancock's CMC condition, emotiュcons were not often used. On the other hand, in this paper,
except for the non-emoticon condition in Experiment 2, the
sender-participants used emoticons rather frequently. One
possible explanation for these differences is that, while
Hancock's experiment was conducted in a laboratory using
keyboards, most participants in my experiment imagined
that they were using their mobile phones to send the Eュ
mails. Japanese students very often use emoticons when
communicating by a mobile phone (Miyake, 2005). Some
emoticons are a readymade feature of mobile phones. The
participants in the present experiments, imagining the use of E-mailsbymobilephones.l11ight have simply followed
their daily practice in the use of emoticons.
General Discussion
In this paper, 1 demonstrated the sender's overconfidence
in irony with simulated E-mail c0111l11unication. Although
-64 一一
lrony and Sender's Overconfdence
senders engaging in E-mail communication might be espeュ
cially prone to overconfidence (Kruger et al.ヲ 2005) , in other
types of communication, they will not be totally free from
this illusion (Keysar, 1994; Keysar & Henly, 2002). The
findings in this paper will also have implications for disュ
cussing overconfidence in other communication media such
as face-to-face cOl11munication, telephone conversation, and
the exchange of letters.
While the present paper has focused on irony, the sendュ
er's overconfidence is expected to emerge in a variety of
verbal communication (Kruger, et a l., 2005 , Takeda & Nuュ
l11asaki, 2007). Depending on the nature of the verbal acts
exal11ined, overconfidence might emerge in some aspects
other than interpr・etation of intention, too. For instance, in
the case of requests, besides the intention of request, the
sender and the receiver might also diverge for the evaluaュ
tion of sincerity or politeness expressed in the message.
When the sender intends to communicate an apology, the
discrepancy may arise between the sender and receiver for
the sender's sincerity, the acceptance of the apology, and so on.
The sender's overcon白dence can be an intriguing pheュ
nomenon 110t only from theoretical but also practical perュ
spectives. It will be necessary to turn our eyes to various
aspects of overconfidence in the 印刷I・e.
Acknowledgements
The portions of this paper were presented at the 71 st Meeting of
the Japanese Association of Psychology (September, 2007) and at the 21 st Meeting of the Japanese Association of Sociolinguisュ
tic Sciences (March, 2008) 1 would like to thank Professor Gregory Rohe for his comment
on earlier drafts of this article. 1 would also like to tha叫( for Proュ
fessor Mika Sasaki for her assistance of the research, as well as her suggestion on the interpretations of the results.
This research was supported by a Grant in Aid for Scienュ
tific Research from the Japan Society for the Promotion of
Science, No.19530568 (2007-2009), No. 20330133(2008
2010), and by the Okawa Foundation for Information and
Telecommunications (2006)
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Footnotes
1) The messages written by sender-participants were retyped
by the experimenter. (Some emoticons were impossible to
type, so they were handwritten as accurately as possible.) Then the experimenter asked the sender-participants to
check whether the letters, emoticons, and other symbols
were as intended. These procedures were eXplained to both
sender-and receiver-participants before they made ratings.
2) In participants-based analyses (Fl) , Role was treated as reュpeated measures. In item-based analyses (月), both varia-
bles were treated as repeated measures.
3) In the situations of sincere praise, the receiver-participants as well as the sender-participants judged accurately. As a
result, the degrees of overconfidence were generally very
-65-
Shinichiro OKAMOTO
low.
4) For the individual comparisons between each ofthe context
conditions, Newman-Keuls tests were employed. 1 report
significant results (p<.05) only
5) 1n Keysar (1994)'s experiments, although the participants did not produce their own message, they showed overconfiュdence. It is necessary to scrutinise fmiher what factors deュ
crease the bystander's overconfidence.
6) Both variables were treated as repeated measures.
7) Following the instruction, the participants in the non-emotトcon condition did not use any emoticons at all.
Appendix
Examples of the stories employed in Experiment 1
[Singing]
Midori Yamada loves singing. She often sings in a karaoke s回
dio. She sings popular music. However, her pitch is not good, nor is her rhythm.
66
1f you made a r右百emark of irony about Midorγ s singing to another .
pe引rson [by E-寸ma泊il円], what would you say?
Please rewrite the following statement as you see fit.
Midori is good at singing. Her tune and rhythm are excellent
[Knowledge ofthe Japanese history]
Yumi Yamamoto specializes in history. However, she seems not to study so much. She is not so knowledgeable about the history.
When Yumi and you watch a quiz program on TV about Heian
Period, she hardly got any collect answers to the ten questions presented. 1n some cases you knew more than her.
1f you made a remark of irony about Yumi 's knowledge of the
Japanese history to another person [by E-mail] , what would you say?
Please rewrite the following statement as you see fit.
Yumi is , as might have been expected for a s加dent majoring hisュ
tory, very knowledgeable about Japanese history. 1 have found
she is quitez familiar with the history of the Heian Period.
Final version received, October 7, 2015