A new study suggests personality traits may influence how people react to written errors. There is a high probability that you might be an introvert, if you cannot overlook grammar and typos. “This is the first study to show that the personality traits of listeners / readers have an effect on the interpretation of language,” said Julie Boland, University of Michigan (U-M) professor of linguistics and psychology, and the study’s lead author.

“In this experiment, we examined the social judgments that readers made about the writers,” said Boland.

The University of Michigan study with its sample size of 83 participants down in front of some email responses to an ad for a housemate and those responses had been doctored in some cases to include typos in which words had their letters mixed around as well as ones of a more grammatical nature. They gathered personality data of the participants and then had them rate the “perceived intelligence, friendliness and other attributes” of the emails’ authors.

The study found that extroverts were more likely to overlook errors of any kind, people who were conscientious and less open weren’t too fond of typos, and “less agreeable” people tended to take issue with the ones related to word usage.

Participants who reported grammar being important at the beginning of the experiment were more likely to be bothered by grammatical errors at the end, study co-author Robin Queen from the University of Michigan said. Less agreeable people are more sensitive to grammatical errors, while more conscientious and less open people are sensitive to typos, the researchers said.

By Premji