Nice to meet you.(!) Gendered norms in punctuation usage

Abstract

People face a myriad of daily decisions about how to communicate, especially in today's digital world. We consider the decision to use exclamation points as a window into how men and women navigate the mundane choices that guide so much of their day to day communication. Across five studies, our findings suggest that exclamation point usage is associated more with women than with men, that these normative expectations are impactful, and that women – who are more sensitive to potential downstream impression formation implications of using exclamation points – think about this issue more than men and are more uncertain of their exclamation point usage. We further find that the decision to use exclamations does indeed shape social perception, leading to more positive impressions overall but also some negative concerns; however, we do not find evidence that these effects are moderated by communicator gender. Our findings provide insight into how men and women engage in everyday communication in the face of normative expectations related to gender and shed light on the unexpected burdens that this can create.