Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Working Conversations podcast, where we talk all things leadership, business, communication, and trends in organizational life. I'm your host, Dr. Janel Anderson.

In a world where screens mediate most of our communication, it's easy to forget that there's a human being on the other side of our digital interactions. Whether it's a heated exchange on social media or a nasty email, our relationships are being shaped by the technology that comes between us.

And what's interesting, though, is that while we tend to dehumanize other people through our screens, we often humanize the very machines we interact with like Siri, Alexa, and ChatGPT. We're polite, forgiving, and sometimes even protective of our digital tools. So why do we struggle to extend the same courtesy to our fellow humans online? Today, I want to explore this puzzling contrast and offer some thoughts on it.

So in today's episode, we're diving into the surprising ways in which we interact with technology and how that behavior reveals a lot about our own social norms and sometimes our lack of them. We'll look at some classic experiments that show just how polite we tend to be with computers, why that is, and how it contrasts with our online interactions with our real human counterparts. Plus, we'll revisit the online disinhibition effect, which helps explain why our digital manners can be, well, a little rough around the edges.

Okay, so to understand why we might feel the need to be polite to machines, let's go back to the 1990s, when researchers Clifford Nass and Byron Reeves at Stanford University were conducting a series of groundbreaking studies. Now, this research was just coming out when I was in grad school working on my PhD we didn't have the term social media yet. We were calling it new media studies, and I was researching this stuff and assisting in teaching a class on it. So Nas and Reeves coined what's known as the Media Equation theory, which basically says that people treat computers, TVs, and other media as if they're real people or real life places.

Now, this may sound odd, but when they tested it, they found some fascinating results. In one study, they asked participants to complete tasks on a computer and then evaluate the computer's performance. Some participants filled out the evaluation form on the very same computer that had been helping them complete the task, while others completed the evaluation on a different computer. And here's where it gets interesting. People, rated people were significantly more polite when evaluating the computer that they'd been working with, they rated it as more positive and it was as if they didn't want to hurt its feelings.

Now this was puzzling because of course, the participants knew that they weren't dealing with a real person. They were just evaluating a machine. But somehow the social rules that we reserve for human interactions kicked in and they were more polite to the computer if that computer was the same computer they were doing the evaluation on.

Now, this research extended to other social behaviors too. People responded more positively to computers that used polite language, and they were more likely to follow the suggestions of the computer or comply with its requests. When the computer used friendlier tones, it was as if by simply phrasing a suggestion in a polite way, the computers being became more effective and even more trustworthy to the person who was using it.

Now this behavior is something that the researchers dubbed mindless politeness, meaning we don't even realize we're doing it. Now, you might even think about your own behavior with different types of systems that you interact with. Whether it be a self driving car or Siri or Alexa or ChatGPT. You might be using mindless politeness yourself. Now we really have to explore this whole idea of why our we even polite to machines.

Why do we treat computers with politeness even when there's no expectation of politeness in return? Now of course, AI and various computing tools do have politeness built into them so that we are more compliant and we enjoy using them more. But they don't need to. So Nass and his colleagues explained this with the concept of mindless social responses. Our brains are wired to recognize social cues and respond accordingly. So when we hear a polite tone, we're inclined to reciprocate, even if we consciously know that there's no real other person on the other end. It's almost automatic. It's like a byproduct of our social instincts to be polite to somebody when they're polite to us. Now let's switch gears for a minute and look at the online disinhibition effect.

And this is where politeness flips when we are having interactions with our fellow humans. So as we switch gears here and look at how we behave when we're actually interacting with humans online, unlike those courteous exchanges that we have with machines, our communication with people in digital spaces often loses that same level of politeness. Now again, psychologists have a term for this phenomenon. They call it the online disinhibition effect. And you've heard me talk about it here on the podcast. In the past it was episode 128, why people are Rude and Worse Online, and we'll link that episode up in the show notes.

But anyway, as a quick review, the online disinhibition effect describes how people tend to act differently online than they would to a person that they were in an in person interaction with. So being behind a screen can make us feel more anonymous and more removed from the actual consequences of our words.

So we might say things online that we would never say face to face. So again, this lack of physical presence reduces the social cues that we would usually respond to, like facial expressions or body language or politeness, and that helps us gauge how our message is landing with the other person. And without those cues, it is easy to misinterpret messages or worse, come across as rude or abrasive without even realizing it.

So while we may be quick to add a polite thank you to Alexa or Siri or ChatGPT or a self driving car, we might skip the pleasantries when emailing a coworker or commenting on a shared project. Now this difference can absolutely create tension in the workplace, where people might feel that their colleagues are being overly blunt or dismissive in the digital space in ways that they wouldn't be if they were face to face. And you know, as we've talked about a lot here on the podcast, with work from home and hybrid workplaces still being the norm, this is a challenge that's going to continue to confront us for a very long time. So we really need to figure this out now.

It's not necessarily intentional when people are blunt or come across as rude online. It's often a byproduct of how digital communication just strips away the context and the tone. You know, those social cues that would typically guide our responses that we are so much more attuned to when we are face to face or even in real time communication with them on the phone, for example.

Now, the research from the 1990s is not the only research on politeness and our digital interactions. In the years since Nas and Reeves initial findings, further research has continued to examine this contrast in our behavior towards machines versus humans. So computers versus humans. So for example, a recent study published in Artificial intelligence review in 2023 explored politeness in human machine interactions and found that people often still follow those politeness norms with the AI tools that we're using these days, but maybe not as much nuance included in those interactions as they do with real humans. So this research indicates that while users of these tools appreciate polite language from machines. They expect the politeness to be functional and efficient, rather than overly elaborate or emotional.

Now additionally, researchers have noted that cultural differences affect how politeness is perceived and practiced in human computer interactions. People from high context cultures, those that value indirect communication and social hierarchy and stick to the rules within that, are often more sensitive to how polite language is being used, even with machines. And this can affect how different users from around the world interact with AI, indicating that politeness and norms in digital communication are not a one size fits all. Now, if that notion of high context culture is new to you, and it's not something I've talked about recently here on the podcast, or really probably ever on the podcast, but is very part and partial of human communication across different cultures.

So let me just give you a quick primer. So high context cultures are cultures in which there is a lot of indirect social cues as part of the communication. So much is conveyed through context, through nonverbal cues and a shared understanding. So in these cultures, people may rely on subtle hints, tone or body language to convey meaning or politeness.

And it often includes showing deference or respect to the person who you're communicating with, especially if it's somebody who is in authority or in a senior position, like a leader in your organization. So examples of some high context cultures include Japan, China and many other East Asian countries, as well as some countries in the Middle east and Latin America.

Now, low context cultures are those in which communication tends to be more direct with people relying on explicit, clear and straightforward language. There's less emphasis on reading between the lines, and the interactions are much more task oriented. This approach to communication can sometimes come across as blunt, especially when you're working with somebody who's in a high context culture. But the low context culture is definitely valued and communication within that is definitely valued for its clarity and efficiency. So some examples of low context cultures include the United States, Germany and Scandinavian countries like Sweden and Norway.

And just to put a very practical example to this, when I was a college professor, I was teaching a class in, I was taking a group of students to Ireland, which is a much higher context culture than the United States, which a lot of times people don't realize that because we both speak English and it's easy to communicate with somebody from Ireland, but it is a much higher context culture.

One of the things I was doing with the students that I was taking on this study abroad trip was I was taking them to Microsoft and I had a person who was boots on the ground in Ireland helping me arrange all of the logistics. And she was supposed to be getting us booked at Microsoft, and for the life of her, she could not do it. And I was supposed to have her do all of that stuff. And I just got frustrated one day and I called Microsoft Ireland and I got us booked. And then when I told her, I was like, it's taken care of, she was like, how did you possibly do that? And I was like, I just called and asked the front desk if we could get somebody in there in their localization and translation department to meet with a group of 25 students from the US and their professor. Now, she would have never approached it that way because of being in a much higher context culture where a relationship is everything. She was asking everybody she knew if they knew somebody who worked at Microsoft in Ireland and was working the connections. And that's what somebody in a high context culture does.

Whereas somebody like me in the US in a low context culture is just going to like, pick up the phone, make the call, and book the appointment. Well, anyway. These differences as it relates to human computer interaction mean that people from high context cultures might expect AI or virtual assistants to use more polite and indirect language, while those from low context cultures, like the US might prefer concise, direct responses and might not be as much about the pleases and the thank yous.

So what do we take from all of this and how do we apply that to our thinking about the future of communication and the future of workplace communication in this digital world? What can we take away from all this? Well, first, the way we interact with machines shows just how deeply social our responses are, even when the other party or person in the communication isn't even real. This also highlights a significant gap in how we handle human versus machine communication online. We're quick to apply social rules to machines, but oddly, we often drop them when we are in interactions with real people. It kind of makes no sense. We really do need to pause and think more about this and have our thinking inform our interactions.

So in the workplace, understanding this difference between how we behave to AI and digital assistants versus we behave towards other humans is key. So virtual collaboration, of course, is an absolute staple of our professional life. I mean, it really was before the pandemic as well. Especially if you're in a multinational or a global corporation, you were already doing this way before the pandemic. But now post pandemic, we are doing this so much more. And if we let our digital interactions strip away all of our social graces, we really do risk creating misunderstandings and alienation among our colleagues and things like professional loneliness will become even more prevalent pronounced than they already are.

Now, recognizing the impact of our tone and our choice of words in our emails, in our chat messages, our teams messages, our slack messages, and our video calls make a huge difference in how our communication is perceived and by extension, how our relationships with our colleagues are developing and being managed. So if we can bring some of the same politeness that we use with Alexa and Siri and ChatGPT and self driving cars into our professional communication, we might just avoid some of the miscommunication and misunderstanding and frustration that come from this stripped down, impersonal digital interaction that we have unfortunately become accustomed to having.

And maybe, just maybe, the next time you type a quick message to a colleague you'll remember that even a small courtesy can go a long way. I want you to pause and really reacquaint yourself with the idea that there is an actual human on the other side of that interaction before you proceed.

All right? Today on the podcast, we have explored the curious ways that we interact with computers, both with AI and with each other in the digital space, discovering that our instincts for politeness, well, they don't always transfer between our digital assistants and actual humans. Now, I hope this episode gave you some food for thought, and I hope you take that pause when you are, especially when you're frustrated or angry or irritated with your colleague or your client and you're about to have that digital interaction with them that's mediated by screens.

So I want you to pause, reflect on the person on the other side before you proceed. So again, I hope this episode gave you some food for thought on how you're going to engage with these digital tools and with your colleagues each and every day. Now, this research shows up in my latest keynote, and it shows up in a book that I'm working on. So this certainly is not the last time you'll be hearing from me about politeness and computers.

Now, in the meantime, stay polite out there, both with your devices and with your fellow humans. Because remember, the future of work is not only about technology. It's about the values that we uphold, the communities that we build, and the sustainable growth that we're all striving for. We need to keep on exploring, keep innovating, and keep envisioning the absolutely and truly remarkable possibilities that lie ahead. So as always, my friends, stay curious, stay informed, and stay ahead of the curve, and tune in next week for another insightful exploration of the trends that are shaping our professional world.

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