Civility unplugged: Some electronic communicators recklessly give way to rudeness

Perhaps, even if you are not a journalist, you've gotten an e-mail that says something like this: "You're a stinking liberal. Most likely you're unattractive and were left out as a child."

Such an e-mail will often not be signed. The sender, who has a "user name" and resides at a virtual address, will likely have dashed off his response in the heat of the moment, angry about something you have done or said. That's how it is with electronic communication: Immediacy and distance make harshness easy and guilt-free. "Disinhibition" social scientists call it.

The social restraints that typically inhibit us when we're face to face are absent when we're sending an e-mail or instant message, or posting a thought on an online bulletin board. Add anonymity into the mix, and people tend to be even bolder. When we hide behind the electronic screen, notes professor P.M. Forni of Johns Hopkins University, "the temptation of saying something reckless is very strong."

Not so long ago, sending a nasty anonymous letter was considered "a vile thing to do," says Forni, author of "Choosing Civility: the 25 Rules of Considerate Conduct."

"It was despised by civil people. And it was disregarded." Online, though, it has become a normal form of communication.

"More and nastier" is the way KSL-Radio talk show host Doug Wright characterizes the angry e-mails he gets from listeners, some of them anonymous, some not. Recently, issues like immigration and last year's debate over whether to ban same-sex marriage have produced the angriest e-mails, including one that called Wright a "gutless puke."

"In the old days, people would have to sit down and write a letter," remembers Wright fondly. "They'd have to fold it, put it in an envelope, put a stamp on it, put it in the mailbox." By then, he says, the letter writer might have calmed down and realized the value of restraint.

"Whenever you're not dealing with a real live human being in front of you," says Salt Lake psychologist and Zen priest E. Kay Barickman, "it's very easy to dehumanize people. You're a step removed from looking in their faces. So you're not getting immediate feedback about the hurt being caused."

Barickman says that the e-mails she gets are "thank goodness, almost always very kind." Perhaps this is because she is so Zen. Also because she is not in the media.