6 Tips for Decoding Emotions in Text Messages

Does he respect you?  Is she upset with you?  Here are some ways to find out.

How do you decode emotions in text messages? It’s easy when people say they are angry or sad or excited, or if they tack an emoji to the end of a text. But what if they don’t? Given that even face-to-face communication can be confusing, it should not surprise us that these truncated, dashed-off messages can result in disastrous misunderstandings.

In the age of technology, we not only need to decode in-person interactions, but textual transmissions as well. How do we know what is being communicated without the benefit of seeing facial expressions or body language?

Here are six tips to get you started and help you better decode emotions in text messages…or at least to avoid jumping to conclusions:

1. Assume good intentions.

Texts are a difficult medium for communicating emotion. We have no facial expressions or tone of voice or conversation to give us more information. In general, text messages are short, offering us very little information with which we can work. A smiley face or series of exclamation points can help assure us that the text is meant to express positive emotion, but texts do not always include these indicators. Our friends’ busy schedules may lead to abrupt messages; similarly, our partner’s playful sarcasm isn’t always read as playful.

If a text doesn’t say, “I’m angry,” don’t assume that the texter is angry. We are better off reading a text with the assumption that the texter has good intentions. Otherwise, we may end up in a lot of unnecessary arguments.

2. Cultivate awareness of unconscious biases.

Even trained coders who meet weekly to discuss discrepancies don’t agree on which emotion (or how much emotion) is being expressed. People just do not see emotions in the same way. We have unconscious biases that lead us to draw different conclusions based on the same information.

For example, males and females often differ in how they interpret others’ emotions. If Bob writes, “My wife missed our 10-year anniversary,” men may think Bob is angry, while women may think Bob is sad.

Our emotion-detection skills are affected by our personal characteristics. When it comes to detecting emotion in texts, try to remember that our unconscious biases affect our interpretations, and so the emotions we detect may be reflective of things about us as much as they are reflective of the information in the text.

3. Explore the emotional undertones of the words themselves.

The words people use often have emotional undertones. Think about some common words like love, hate, wonderful, hard, work, explore, or kitten.

If a text reads, “I love this wonderful kitten,” we can easily conclude that it is expressing positive emotions. If a text reads, “I hate this hard work,” that seems pretty negative. But if a text reads, “This wonderful kitten is hard work,” what emotion do we think is being expressed?

One approach to detecting emotions when they appear to be mixed is to use the “bag-of-words” method. This just means that we look at each word separately. How positive are the words “kitten” and “wonderful”? And how negative are the words “hard” and “work”? By looking at how positive and negative each word is, we may be able to figure out the predominant emotion the texter is trying to express.

4. Avoid assuming that you know how a person feels.

Text messages aren’t just short. They’re also incomplete. With text messages, we are pretty much guaranteed that there will be missing information. We usually try to fill in the gaps with the information we have, and so we start thinking about how we would feel in the situation the texter is describing.

Unfortunately, there are huge individual differences in how people feel in any given situation. For example, if I grew up in poverty, earning $30 per hour might make me feel pretty good; but if I used to be a CEO at a Fortune 500 company, $30 per hour might make me feel dissatisfied or even depressed. The emotions that emerge in a given context, then, are highly dependent on our unique perspectives and experiences; this makes it very difficult for us to guess how someone else is feeling. Always ask yourself: “Am I drawing conclusions based on emotional information provided by the other person, or making assumptions based solely on how I would feel in the same situation?”

5. Explore your theory of emotion.

Academics are not the only ones with a theory of emotion; everyone has one. We all have an idea about where emotions come from and what they mean. It might help to consciously explore your own (possibly unconscious) assumptions about how emotions work: Do you think feelings like anger and sadness are discrete and separable from each other, or do you think they can mix together?

Research suggests that we tend to experience a greater amount of discrete emotions, like fear, in response to specific environmental triggers, like encountering a bear in the forest. That being said, the research also shows that when we are feeling one negative emotion, we are much more likely to be feeling other negative emotions as well. This evidence has important implications for interpreting emotions in texts. If you’ve successfully detected that a person feels sad, you can be almost certain that they are also feeling anxious or angry.

6. Seek out more information.

If you’re still unclear about what emotion is in a text, seek out more information. In an example above, Bob’s wife missed their 10-year anniversary. What if you asked Bob to tell you more? Bob might tell you that his wife died, and that is why she missed their anniversary. Suddenly, we may believe that Bob is feeling more sadness than anger. The bottom line is: avoid guessing. Instead, ask questions, be empathetic, and try to see things through the other person’s eyes.