Recent research in the Journal of Personality and Social Psych shows that people have about a 50/50 chance of correctly ascertaining the tone of someone’s email, even though they think they’re right at picking up the tone 90% of the time. In fact, how we interpret the tone of an email is contingent on a number of things like what kind of mood we’re in at the time. This is somewhat related to cyber dis-inhibition, too.
(Hat tip: Bruno Giussani)