You’ll save a few seconds by using texting lingo, like “btw” or “tbh,” but new research finds these abbreviations are probably harming your social life — and could explain why you’re being left unread. 

Researchers found the more you shorten the words you text, the less likely you are to get a reply. Whether you’re on a dating app or messaging fellow gamers, it turns out that texting with abbreviations makes people believe you’re putting less effort into the conversation. They’ll find your message less sincere, and not as worthy of a reply as the exact same text written in full. 

“Abbreviations imply informality and casualness, so we thought if somebody uses one, you might read that as a signal of closeness and be more likely to respond,” says study co-author Sam Maglio, a marketing professor in the Department of Management at U of T Scarborough and the Rotman School of Management. 

“We figured that was perfectly plausible, and we found out that was perfectly wrong. An abbreviation makes the other party tune out.” 

Published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, one of the study’s eight experiments took a deep dive into actual Tinder conversation histories, submitted by 700 users across five continents. Researchers calculated the percentage of abbreviations participants used in their messages, and for every one-per-cent increase in abbreviations, their average conversation length decreased by about seven-per-cent. 

When other Tinder users were surveyed, 80 per cent believed their matches wouldn’t care if they used abbreviations. Yet they did, no matter their profile characteristics, the topics they discussed, the length of their messages nor how fancy their word choice. 

Another experiment set research assistants loose on Discord, a messaging platform popular among young people. They sent almost 2,000 messages to members of a Discord channel dedicated to anime TV shows, asking for a show recommendation. 

“We set ourselves up to fail. We tried to find the most challenging arena for this effect to work: young people who live online. And it still worked,” says Maglio.

The Discord messages were probing whether reactions changed based on the type of abbreviations used, including phonological abbreviations, which condense words based on how they sound, like “plz” or “thnx”; acronyms and initialisms like “hru” and “ttyl”; subbing letters or numbers for words, as in “u 2”; and contractions, which shorten words by removing letters, such as “rlly” or “wud”. 

All forms of abbreviations were less likely to get a reply than their spelled-out counterparts, except for the messages that used phonological abbreviations (they didn’t find that exception in a subsequent experiment, however).

In a virtual speed dating experiment, roughly 200 young Americans were paired up for five-minute dates. Half were encouraged to integrate words from one of two lists, an abbreviated version and a spelled-out one, into their conversations. Dates had a much greater desire to continue talking to non-abbreviated texters, and viewed them as more sincere. More of their dates also offered to share their contact information to continue chatting after the experiment. 

Several lab-based studies found the same results, even as Maglio says he and his co-authors tried out every condition they thought might make the effect go away. One study had people look at fake texts, another had participants look at their own text history, others examined if anything changed when messages were short or long, if they had a higher ratio of abbreviations, and if they were sent by someone they were or weren’t close with. 

The thousands of participants in these studies all rated how much effort they felt were put into the texts, how sincere they felt the sender was being, and how likely they were to reply. Across the board, abbreviations meant less effort, less sincerity, and a lower desire to reply.   

“It’s possible that some participants treated the sincerity question as a kind of general ‘good or bad’ evaluation,” says study co-author David Fang (BComm 2022 UTSG). “We mainly chose sincerity because it's important for relational building. Participants are taking a stab at defining what they perceive sincerity to be, for instance expressing genuineness in the interaction.”

Another study had them reply to texts, and when the initial messages used abbreviations, participants put less effort into their replies. 

“That study does speak to the very rapid growth of cynicism and detachment that you could see snowballing,” Maglio says. “If they do respond, maybe it turns into a race to the bottom.”

This article was originally published by the University of Toronto News team.