Use The Hanlon Principle To Communicate Better On Social Media

Social networks have revolutionized the way we communicate. Years ago it was unthinkable for us to talk to our friends almost in real time when we were not in their company. Now we only need an internet connection and use one of the many social networks that we are connected to.

What has not evolved is our way of understanding ourselves with others, the way of using language as a central vehicle in establishing relationships. And of course, when communication is no longer face-to-face, misunderstandings arise, which in most cases say more about the person who interprets the message than the person who sends it.

The elephant in the room

The mobile rings. It is a notification from one of your social networks. You read on the screen:  -Hello! How’s it going?

It turns out that you’ve had a bad day or that the one who writes you is your boss’s bore and you think he needs another favor. Or maybe you’re in a good mood or it’s your best friend that you wanted so badly to talk to. But all this the sender of the message does not know. You cannot know it since it is not a face-to-face communication and you do not have access to other keys of the language as important as words:

•  the place and spatial behavior where the conversation takes place. It is not the same to greet someone on the street that you can see in a hurry and pass by apologizing for the rush than in a social network. When we are connected in our social networks we can be busy working on the computer and we can leave the messages as seen. We see them to see if it is something important but we do not have to answer. And this is where the receiver can draw a thousand and one conclusions, among which the dramatic ones stand out: “he doesn’t love me because he doesn’t answer me”, “he doesn’t like me” or “what have I done to him?”.

• it refers to the vocalization of language itself, to its tone and form, but not to its content. As much as we use them, irony, sarcasm and even jokes are not well detected in communication through social networks. Tone is a very important part of understanding the meaning of a message and in the world of technology it can only be reflected in voice messages.

• : yes, this refers to the language we use to write the message. But here the distance from the receiver also comes into play. It is not the same to be face to face with the boy you like and he greets you, making you nervous and answering as if you had some communication disorder: stuttering, aphasia, anomia … than being quietly at home or surrounded by friends thinking what to answer him ” so as not to appear anxious or silly ”or“ so that it is something original ”.

All of this is something that most of us are aware of. We know that in a communication everything counts, from the tone to the distances, but in social networks we do not take it into account. He becomes the elephant in the room, we all see him, but each one explains his presence in a way, understanding the messages as it suits him best.

The Hanlon Principle

Robert J. Hanlon, in 1980 already gave us a solution to this problem of communication on social networks, even before they existed, in his famous book on Murphy’s Laws. In it, Hanlon enunciated what has become known as the Hanlon principle or Hanlon’s razor: “Never attribute to evil what can be explained by stupidity.”

So if we listen to Hanlon, we will lower the degree of intentionality that we attribute to many of the communications that we read on social networks. Many of the flaws in the way that we detect and interpret against us correspond more to carelessness than to intentionally wanting to harm us. The truth is that the world forgets us more often than it conspires against us.

Thus, as we have pointed out in the previous section, written communication lacks many elements of information that we do have in direct communication. But, on the other hand, the lack of them does not mean that we have to imagine them, but it does mean that we have to increase our prudence with our interpretation of what is written. In this way we will avoid anger and misunderstandings that do not really make sense.