People Who Point Out Grammar Mistakes Are Jerks, Study Suggests

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According to a 2016 paper published in PLOS One, there is a significant link between an individual's personality traits and their responses to typos and grammatical errors.

This connection has the potential to provide valuable insights into how people interact online. 

The study's lead author, Julia Boland, hailing from the University of Michigan, argues that a person's personality plays a crucial role in shaping how they interpret language.

Julia also notes that this is the first study to demonstrate the impact of readers' personality traits on their language interpretation.

She further emphasizes that the study focused on the social judgments readers make about writers.

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The research was conducted with 83 participants who were presented with email responses to an advertisement seeking a housemate.

These email responses were intentionally altered to include controlled grammatical mistakes and typos (such as 'teh' instead of 'the,' 'to' instead of 'too,' 'it's' instead of 'its,' etc.). 

This was done with the intention of discerning what readers observed, analyzed, and believed about these messages.

Subsequently, the 83 participants were asked to evaluate the person who had authored the email responses based on their perceived intelligence, friendliness, and suitability as a potential housemate. 

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Additionally, participants were questioned at the end of the experiment about whether they had noticed any grammatical mistakes or typos and, if so, the extent to which these errors had bothered them.

To gain a deeper understanding, the researchers administered a Big Five Personality Assessment to the participants, which assessed their levels of openness, agreeableness, and extroversion/introversion, specifically in the context of online communication. 

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Participants were also questioned about their age, address, location, and their perceptions of language – whether they viewed it as a mere communication tool or something with a more profound significance.

On the whole, participants in the study consistently rated fictional housemate applicants who made typos and grammatical errors in their emails as less favorable compared to those who demonstrated flawless spelling and grammar. 

However, there were specific personality traits that led some individuals to be more critical of the applicants who made such errors.

Extroverts generally seemed to overlook the typos and didn't focus on these superficial mistakes; they sought to delve deeper into the content. 

In contrast, introverts were more prone to passing judgment based on these errors. Additionally, individuals who identified as more conscientious but less open exhibited heightened sensitivity to typos, whereas those with less agreeable personalities were notably offended by them. 

The researchers suggested that this could be because less agreeable individuals have a lower tolerance for deviations from conventional language norms.

These findings, while suggestive, should not be broadly applicable, especially given the very limited sample size used in the study. 

Further research is undoubtedly necessary to establish stronger connections and draw more conclusive conclusions.

However, it's crucial to remember that typos and grammatical mistakes are part of human nature.

Criticizing or using them to judge someone's intelligence may not be a fair or considerate approach because that might very well make you a jerk.