Email Response Psychology shows Weakness of Spam

New Scientist first reported these findings about numbers of email addressees and the quality of answers the sender receives. Greg Barron of the Technion Technology Institute in Haifa, Israel, and his colleague Eldad Yechiam set up a Yahoo account for a fictitious student called Sarah Feldman, and sent an email from her asking if the Technion has a biology faculty. They emailed it to 240 people at the Technion, mainly researchers, admin staff and students.

Each person received it either with just their own address in the "To" box, or with four others. The team divided the replies into various categories: 'Helpful' responses said simply that yes. 'Very helpful' responses included extra information, such as useful phone numbers.

'Unhelpful responses' included the brusque 'Find the Web page and look yourself!' While half the recipients failed to respond to the email if they saw four others were on the address list, this figure fell to 36% for single recipients. And almost a third of the single recipients sent back very helpful responses, compared to just 16% of the multiple recipients.

Barron says this is a diffusion of responsbility and points out that it has implications for spamming. He likened the effect to bystanders at a crime scene, who feel less obliged to intervene if many others are present, and he plans more experiments to analyse it.

Associated Link: New Scientist: Spamming no answer to questions

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