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Emojis influence emotional communication, social attributions, and information processing

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Abstract

Many emojis symbolize nonverbal cues that are used during face-to-face communication. Despite their popularity, few studies have examined how emojis influence digital interactions. The present study addresses this gap by measuring the impact of emojis on emotion interpretation, social attributions, and information processing. Participants read messages that are typical of social exchanges in instant text messaging (IM) accompanied by emojis that mimic negative, positive and neutral facial expressions. Sentence valence and emoji valence were paired in a fully crossed design such that verbal and nonverbal messages were either congruent or incongruent. Perceived emotional state of the sender, perceived warmth, and patterns of eye movements that reflect information processing were measured. A negativity effect was observed whereby the sender’s mood was perceived as negative when a negative emoji and/or a negative sentence were presented. Moreover, the presence of a negative emoji intensified the perceived negativity of negative sentences. Adding a positive emoji to a message increased the perceived warmth of the sender. Finally, processing speed and understanding of verbal messages was enhanced by the presence of congruent emojis. Our results therefore support the use of emojis, and in particular positive emojis, to improve communication, express feelings, and make a positive impression during socially-driven digital interactions.

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... Users employ emojis to meet various emotional communication functions, such as adding an emotional tone to a neutral verbal message or communicating a higher intensity emotion (Li & Yang, 2018). From the receiver's perspective, there is evidence that emojis intensify the emotional tone of messages, facilitate their interpretation, and convey information about the emotional state of the sender (Boutet et al., 2021;Daniel & Camp, 2020;Gesselman et al., 2019;Hand et al., 2022;Herring & Dainas, 2020;Kaye et al., 2021;Kralj Novak et al., 2015;Riordan, 2017;Rodrigues et al., 2017). For instance, Boutet et al. (2021) found that when a negative emoji is present, people tend to view the sender's emotional state as more negative regardless of the message's valence. ...
... From the receiver's perspective, there is evidence that emojis intensify the emotional tone of messages, facilitate their interpretation, and convey information about the emotional state of the sender (Boutet et al., 2021;Daniel & Camp, 2020;Gesselman et al., 2019;Hand et al., 2022;Herring & Dainas, 2020;Kaye et al., 2021;Kralj Novak et al., 2015;Riordan, 2017;Rodrigues et al., 2017). For instance, Boutet et al. (2021) found that when a negative emoji is present, people tend to view the sender's emotional state as more negative regardless of the message's valence. ...
... To our knowledge, only two studies have directly examined the influence of emojis on first impressions of senders in texting. Boutet et al. (2021) found that senders are perceived as "warmer" when text messages include a happy emoji. Hand et al. (2022) replicated this finding. ...
Article
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Lorsque nous rencontrons de nouvelles personnes, nous nous faisons instinctivement une première impression de leurs caractéristiques, ce qui peut avoir un impact significatif sur la dynamique interpersonnelle. La présente étude s’inscrit dans le prolongement de recherches antérieures portant sur les interactions en face à face en explorant la formation d’une impression dans le cadre d’une communication médiatisée par la technologie, où les indices non verbaux sont moins abondants. Plus précisément, nous avons examiné la mesure dans laquelle l’interprétation émotionnelle des messages textes influence les attributions de dominance et de chaleur. Les participants (N = 399) ont reçu des messages textes qui transmettaient un signal émotionnel positif, négatif ou neutre. Certains messages étaient accompagnés d’un émoji (heureux, en colère ou neutre), tandis que d’autres ne contenaient pas d’émoji. Les participants ont évalué leur perception de l’état émotionnel de l’expéditeur du message, ainsi que le degré de chaleur ou de dominance qu’ils lui attribuaient. Les résultats suggèrent que les indices émotionnels, même en l’absence d’informations visuelles ou auditives, jouent un rôle dans la formation des impressions. Ces résultats mettent en lumière les mécanismes de la cognition sociale dans la communication assistée par la technologie et suggèrent des stratégies pour atteindre des objectifs interpersonnels dans des environnements où les indices non verbaux traditionnels sont limités.
... Sentiments can vary widely among individuals in terms of negative and positive intensity, posing a challenge in accurately determining feelings. Emojis, which often accompany text, add another layer of complexity to this challenge [1]. Emojis are commonly used to convey hidden and ambiguous feelings, making them increasingly valuable in SA. ...
... Emojis are commonly used to convey hidden and ambiguous feelings, making them increasingly valuable in SA. A previous study [1] analyzed 13 European languages using a lexicon-based approach, resulting in a comprehensive lexicon containing sentiments related to emojis, applicable in NLP and linguistic research. The use of emojis enhances the continuity of individual communication, improves relationship quality, and strengthens emotional communication between users [4]. ...
... The polarity of emojis within each tweet is then aggregated based on their positive and negative scores. The lexicon utilized in this study, as depicted in Table (3), was proposed by [1]. The table includes the emoji symbol, positive and negative scores, neutral score, and the classification of each emoji symbol. ...
Conference Paper
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The widespread use of social media platforms, such as Twitter, has given rise to research fields focused on analyzing platform content to extract knowledge for decision-making. This study employs natural language processing techniques to construct a Libyan dialect corpus with a focus on polarity, utilizing an emoji lexicon. Initially, tweets in the Libyan dialect were gathered from Twitter and filtered to retain only those containing emoji symbols. Subsequently, exploratory data analysis was conducted to scrutinize the collected tweets, generating a visual statistical interpretation to address various questions. Finally, the polarity of Libyan dialectal tweets was determined through an emoji lexicon-based approach. The results were then assessed by experts, with 80% expressing agreement with the corpus's polarity. The study concludes that emojis play a crucial role in analyzing the sentiment of Libyan youth on Twitter.
... In addressing how emoji and textual sentences interact, numerous researchers emphasize the alignment between verbal and nonverbal cues, noting that response times diminish when the emotional cues of emoji match those of the textual content [22,23]. For example, Boutet et al. [24] added emojis with three emotional valences (positive, neutral, and negative) to the end of instant messages and matched the messages and emojis for congruence and incongruence. They found that participants' processing speed and comprehension of the messages increased in the congruent case. ...
... was higher when stimulated by emoji with the same valence than when stimulated by emoji with different valences. The result is consistent with the previous study, with a facilitation effect occurring when emoji and sentence valence are congruent, and a hindrance effect occurring when they are incongruent [24]. The distinction lies in the fact that their research exhibits both emojis concurrently, whereas our study exhibited them individually. ...
... The response times data in Experiment 2 showed that regardless of the valence of emoji and textual sentence, response time was significantly lower in the congruent condition than in the conflicting condition. This result is not surprising, as similar results were found in both the previous congruent [24] and conflicting studies [21]. In addition, Leathers et al. [39] make a similar argument about face-to-face communication, indicating that individuals have to do extra processing when emotional cues are conflicting. ...
Article
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As a Japanese graphic symbol widely used in the world, Emoji plays an important role in computer mediated communication. Despite its prevalent use, the interaction dynamics between emoji and textual sentences remain inadequately explored. Based on the emotional function of emoji, this study uses the indirect priming method to explore the emotional impact of emoji on subsequent text in computer mediated communication through two progressive behavioral experiments. The results show that: (1) Emoji positioned at the onset of a sentence induce an emotional priming effect; (2) The processing speed is slowest when emoji and text are emotionally conflicting, while in non-conflicting condition, the type of emoji moderates the processing of combined sentences; (3) The emotional influence of emoji plays an auxiliary role, and the valence of textual sentence plays a decisive role in emotional perception.
... The study is a within-subject experiment in which participants are asked to read and evaluate online news discussions, about various more or less polarized topics, with subjectively or non-subjectively phrased comments. To be able to test the exclusive effect of subjectivity, we do not take into account other linguistic or non-linguistic cues, such as emojis or number of likes, which are found to affect the interpretation of a comment (e.g., Boutet et al., 2021) and can have a diplomatic function as well (Caspi & Raz, 2024) but extend beyond the reach of the current paper. ...
... Online comments do, however, include many additional cues, also non-verbal, such as emoji, pictures, social endorsement cues (e.g., likes or downvotes), as well as details about the commenter (e.g., profile picture, username). These cues can also strongly affect the interpretation of a comment (Boutet et al., 2021) and might affect constructiveness perceptions (Caspi & Raz, 2024). Emoji cannot signal a clear subjective perspective, but the combination of such a perspective with emoji (if not used in a contradictory or excessive manner) could have a reinforcing effect (just like positive emoji reinforce positive comments; Neel et al., 2023). ...
... However, this current study seeks to see the relationship in meaningmaking with the encoder and decoder of emoji users. Boutet et al. (2021) addressed the impact of emojis on emotion interpretation, social attributions, and information processing. Participants were made to read messages that were typical of social exchanges in instant text messaging (IM) accompanied by emojis that mimic negative, positive and neutral facial expressions. ...
... This may imply that university students in Anambra State expressed happy emotions most which may be attributed to the fact that they are mostly in a happy mood while they use emojis. This conforms with the study of Boutet et al. (2021), which revealed that emojis are primarily and mostly used to signal attitudes and emotions. ...
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Emojis which are visual symbols deployed in digital communication have become essential tools for expression sharing among young adults, especially university students in Nigeria. This study investigates the encoding and decoding of emojis on social media for expression sharing among university students in Anambra State. Grounded by the symbolic interaction theory, this study was designed as a descriptive survey. With a sample size of 537 students randomly drawn from nine universities in Anambra State, Southeast Nigeria. Findings reveal that 72% of the respondents could decode the common emojis used in shared expressions thus indicating that emojis play a critical role in facilitating emotional expression and social interaction among the respondents on social media. The study recommends that emojis should be part of general communication portfolios not just for students but for the larger society both in formal and informal settings as it helps to reduce verbosity and save time compared to lengthy handwritten texts.
... Smileys were first employed in 1964 for promotional merchandize of an insurance company primarily to level up the team spirit of its employees. (Boutet, et al., ,2021). Emojis are crucial components of millennials communications with the prevalence of social media channels. ...
... The emojis are also used to strengthen a message, express emotion, and express humor. Another study (Boutet, LeBlanc, Chamberland, & Collin, 2021) examined the impact of emojis on social attribution, emotion interpretation, and information processing. Emojis that mimic different expressions were used in the messages, also the emojis valance and sentence valence were fully cross-designed. ...
Article
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Social media platforms have become central to millennial communication, influencing emotions and behaviors despite their virtual nature. Emojis, ubiquitous social media cues, are often viewed as replacements for vocal tone. This study investigates the manipulative effect of emojis on user perception of textual messages. A series of experiments explored the interplay between text comprehension and emoji use. The research aimed to elucidate the motivations behind emoji usage and the impact of incongruent emojis (emoticons that contradict the message) on the recipient's mental state. Employing a theatrical perspective, the study conducted experiments with 50 participants using convenient sampling method. The results of the study clearly demonstrated that the usage of emojis intensifies the effect of message. The positive message shown to the respondents was perceived as more positive with the addition of cheerful and happy emojis. Similarly, the negative message was more inclined to the perception of negative or discouraging emojis. These findings were especially pronounced for the control group where the respondents perceived the message as slightly positive. It was found that using more emojis with the text message amplifies the perception of emojis. the negative emojis increase the negative effect of message and positive emojis intensify the positive perception of message. Future studies should explore the long-term psychological impacts of emoji use in digital communication and consider how this phenomenon can be leveraged for more effective emotional engagement in both personal and professional contexts.
... GenZ users also use the Slightly Smiling Face ' ' emoji ironically or passive-aggressively, whereas older generations interpret it literally (Brandon 2023). The Thumbs up ' ' emoji is perceived especially negatively by GenZ users, as confrontational or passive aggressive, whereas older generations view it positively (Katz 2022 (Barach et al. 2021;Boutet et al. 2021;Howman & Filik 2020;Paggio & Tse 2022;Robus et al. 2020). Eye tracking measures reflect the time course cognitive processing, providing an online measure of how emojis are handled during reading. ...
... The authors likened this to sentence "wrap-up" processes in reading, showing that emojis, like words, undergo a final integration processing stage. Howman and Filik (2020) and Boutet et al. (2021) showed that the emotional incongruence between the emoji and the emotional valence of the sentence can impact information processing, with faster early processing followed by longer later processing for targets surrounding the emoji. Howman and Filik (2020) showed that the presence of the Winking Face ' ' emoji that typically signifies sarcasm paired with a literal, non-sarcastic meaning increased processing time. ...
Article
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This study investigates use and processing of emoji in chatbot conversations. 32 GenZ participants engaged in semi-naturalistic chats in an eye-tracker for ten minutes with a ChatGPT bot that used specific emoji from two personas (GenZ and Millennial). Eye-tracking and sentiment analysis revealed that the GenZ bot was typically positively perceived, while the Millennial bot showed one of two patterns: adaptation or hyperfocus on the ‘wrong’ emoji. The study sheds light on how emoji are used compared to words and their impact on AI assistant communication styles. The findings offer insights for studying open-ended conversations and linguistic patterns using ChatGPT.
... To enhance relatedness, the chatbot used communication indicators such as emojis and encouraging prompts for human-like interaction. Emojis, which are widely used in digital communication (Boutet et al., 2021), can help the chatbot to express emotional responses. For example, the use of the celebratory emoji in a message, "Well done ", could help the chatbot convey more friendly features to students. ...
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The implementation of online learning is often beset with the challenge of student disengagement, especially in online language learning where active learner practice is expected. To address this problem, we explored the use of a chatbot to support students with their English as a Foreign Language (EFL) listening learning in an online undergraduate course. The Self-determination theory was adopted to design the chatbot. Students were invited to interact with the chatbot for ten days to practice their English listening skills. A mixed-methods design was used to measure students’ behavioral engagement, cognitive engagement, and emotional engagement. The results indicated students’ positive online learning experiences with the chatbot. We also conducted follow-up interviews with students to determine their perceptions of learning with the chatbot.
... Building on this exploration, Boutet et al. (2021) uncovered that neutral texts were particularly susceptible to the influence of emojis; the presence of an emotionally-valent face emoji altered participants' perceptions of the message, subtly shifting the sentiment conveyed. Novak et al. (2015) developed the first emoji sentiment lexicon, called the Emoji Sentiment Ranking, which provides a sentiment map of the 751 most frequently used emojis. ...
... • Displaying a graph of results over time [50]. • Using positive emojis in messages to increase the sender's perceived warmth [51]. • Incorporating both male and female genders for a customized agent to increase bonding and acceptance [50]. ...
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Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by motor and non-motor symptoms. The MoveONParkinson project aims to enhance exercise engagement among people with Parkinson’s Disease (PwPD) in the Portuguese context through the ONParkinson digital platform, which provides mobile and web interfaces. While the broader MoveONParkinson project has been previously described from a health-focused perspective, this study specifically focuses on the development and integration of an AI-driven conversational agent (CA) for the Portuguese language, called PANDORA, within the mobile interface of the solution to assist and motivate PwPD in their exercise routines. PANDORA (Parkinson Assistant in Natural Dialogue and Oriented by Rules and Assessments), designed based on Self-Determination Theory (SDT), addresses the psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. A preliminary study involving 20 PwPD, 10 caregivers, and 5 healthcare professionals informed the design requirements for PANDORA. The development process involved four main phases: (1) Design of the Chatbot’s Motivation Model, (2) Design and implementation of the conversational agent, (3) Technical Performance Evaluation, and (4) User Experience Evaluation. Technical Performance Evaluation, conducted with three physiotherapists, assessed domain coverage, coherence response capacity, and dialog management capacity, achieving 100% accuracy in domain coverage and coherence response capacity and 89% in dialog management capacity. The User Experience Study involved eight PwPD users recruited from Portuguese healthcare units performing predefined tasks, with user satisfaction scores ranging from 4.2 to 4.9 on a five-point Likert scale. The findings indicate that integrating a conversational agent with motivational cues tends to increase patient engagement. However, further studies are required to determine PANDORA’s impact on exercise engagement in PwPD.
... In the current study, emojis and stickers were preferred, as evidenced by their use in 251 comments (18.7%). While most previous research has noted the use of emoticons to convey emotions (Boutet et al., 2021;Hasyim, 2019;Li & Yang, 2018), no emoticons were found in this study. This absence may be due to the emoji suggestions which are automatically offered to users, as well as the lack of precision and liveliness in expressing emotions compared to emojis and stickers (Wang, 2020). ...
Article
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Over the years, online communication has become increasingly popular, evolving from purely text-based formats to multifaceted media. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, live streaming of press conferences and other events on social media has dramatically increased. However, there is a lack of studies investigating the linguistic features of netizens’ online communication during live streaming of public events. Therefore, this study aimed to analyse the linguistic features of Facebook comments posted by Malaysian netizens during COVID-19 live press conferences and explore the functions of these linguistic features. In this study, a total of 1339 comments were collected during the live streaming of COVID-19 press conferences by New Straits Times on Facebook. The collected data were analysed following Crystal’s (2006) list of netspeak features. The findings revealed that Malaysian netizens used abbreviations (21.9%), emojis (13.2%), stickers (5.5%), particles (5.2%), punctuation marks (3.6%), translanguaging (3.3%), capitalisation (1.8%), and repetitions of letters (1.6%) when commenting on the COVID-19 live press conferences. The functions of these linguistic features include time-saving, emotional emphasis, identity portrayal, and others.
... Emojis, pictorial representations in text messaging, have increased in prevalence, particularly non-facial ones representing things. This study investigates if emojis depicting things also communicate emotions (Boutet et al., 2021). 86% of paediatric dental patients favour the Emoji scale, and it has a moderate level of agreement with the Wong-Baker FACES scale, indicating that it is very effective for communication purposes. ...
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This study investigates young adults’ use of emoticons (emojis) in India, focusing on their effectiveness in digital communication. It aims to understand factors influencing their use and their potential impact on social inclusion, using a quantitative approach and a structured questionnaire to understand the factors driving emoji usage. The study’s major results indicate that intention to use emojis during virtual communication is significantly influenced by factors such as accuracy, sociability, enjoyment, and efficiency, which together account for 16.4% of the variance. The most significant factor among them is sociability, as respondents agreed that emojis make online communication more social and interactive. The results will aid in comprehending the significance and utility of emojis and how their use can facilitate effective virtual communication among users. The study proposes a statistically significant model to determine the usage and effectiveness of emojis as a new form of digital communication.
... Экспериментально показано, что благодаря наличию соответствующих содержанию текста сообщения эмодзи скорость обработки и понимания информации возрастает [Boutet et al. 2021], особенно если визуальный образ объединяет выражение лица и позу [Lee, Shin 2020]. Исследованиями в области неврологии показано, что области мозга, участвующие в обработке эмоций, активизируются, когда люди подвергаются воздействию эмодзи [Aldunate, González-Ibáñez 2017], что способствует появлению эмоционального отклика, который в социальных отношениях может интерпретироваться как большая степень межличностной близости, причем не только в отношениях с людьми [Baggia et al. 2022], но и при взаимодействии с искусственным интеллектом [Роговец и др. ...
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As mobile messengers gain popularity, visual images affect digital communication, leading to new interaction patterns. This review sums up scientific experience in describing digital communication facilitated by emoji and memes. The review covered scientific articles that reported empirical research on visual communication in digital environment in such open research databases as CyberLeninka, PubMed, Google Scholar, eLibrary, and ResearchGate in 2019–2024. The current rise in visual communication tools seems to reflect the general visual shift in modern culture, associated with the changes in human psychology brought about by total digitalization. Visual communication tools have a high information capacity, which hinders their interpretation, thus modifying the complex of individual and socio-psychological characteristics of interlocutors in an attempt to ensure mutual understanding. The review can be used to improve digital communication that employs alternative communication tools.
... Additionally, a study by Boutet et al. (2021) also said that digital natives mostly use positive emoticons/emojis to enhance the emotional tone of their textual conversations; this is also supported by the positive polarity ratings throughout the age groups in Tables 4 and 5, suggesting an overall positive tone in the conversation. Tables 4 and 5 also show that the age group 45-54 use emoticons/emojis less, even though the subjectivity scores are higher for younger age groups; however, a study by Cui (2022) shows that older age groups can have high subjectivity scores, especially when emoticons/emojis are used in their communication group. ...
Article
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This paper aims to analyse how age groups impact the use of social media language (SL) in online textual conversations, focusing on the type, polarity, and subjectivity of SL to explore identity representation across different age groups. During data collection in 2023, there were 4.76 billion social media users worldwide; hence, understanding the use of SL is essential for analysing how individuals express their emotions and identities online. SL consists of emoticons/emojis, abbreviations, and mixed language in textual conversations. For this study, a qualitative approach was used, with 46 participants from three age groups: 25-34, 35-44, and 45-54 engaging in mock group conversations for one hour using WhatsApp. The participants were separated into six group conversations. The findings show that the older age groups (35-44 and 45-54) prefer to discuss technical or professional topics, whereas the younger age groups (25-34) are more interested in games, food, entertainment, and fun. Furthermore, for the age group 25-34 there is a high usage of emoticons/emojis, whereas the age group 45-54 uses them the least. These findings indicate that age groups have a significant influence on the use of SL and topic preferences in textual conversations, providing insights that will be used to develop a Natural Language Processing (NLP) tool for online identity classification. This study enhances human-computer interaction by investigating how different age groups use SL in digital environments.
... In this pursuit of effective and convincing interaction with users, we have carefully selected specific emojis that correspond to the emotions the robot attempts to express, whose implementation is explained in more detail in Table 3. In the study performed by Boutet et al. [11], the ability of emojis to enhance various facets of human interactions by transmitting information about the sender's affection and personality traits is highlighted. This ability to communicate messages effectively and express feelings significantly contributes to establishing a positive identity in interaction with users. ...
Article
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Emotion recognition has fostered more suitable and effective human–robot interaction (HRI). In particular, social robots have to imitate the expression of feeling through their voices and body gestures in order to ameliorate this interaction. However, robot’s hardware limitations (few joints and computational resources) may restrict the quality of robot’s expressions. To contribute to this area, we conducted a study on how emotions are expressed by humans through gestures, body language, and movements. This study allows understanding universal representation of emotions (movements and gestures) and designing similar movements for robots, despite their hardware limitations. Based on that, we develop and evaluate an emotional interaction system for robots, specifically for Pepper robot. This system utilizes verbal emotion recognition, based on deep learning techniques to interpret and respond with movements and emojis, thus enriching the dynamics of HRI. We implemented two versions of such as interaction system: on board implementation (the emotion recognition process is executed by the robot) and a server-based implementation (the emotion recognition is performed by an external server connected to the robot). We assessed the performance of both versions, as well as the acceptance of robot expressions for HRI. Results show that the combined use of emotional movements and emojis by robot significantly improves the accuracy of emotional conveyance.
... We discuss and offer insights into potential opportunities and challenges emojis will bring for HCI research. enable nonverbal cues from text and enable users to express emotions outside of words [20,37,76]. As a result, users can convey different tones and emotions that might be lost or hard to express using plain text [45]. ...
Preprint
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With the prevalence of instant messaging and social media platforms, emojis have become important artifacts for expressing emotions and feelings in our daily lives. We ask how HCI researchers have examined the role and evolution of emojis in sharing emotions over the past 10 years. We conducted a systematic literature review of papers addressing emojis employed for emotion communication between users. After screening more than 1,000 articles, we identified 42 articles of studies analyzing ways and systems that enable users to share emotions with emojis. Two main themes described how these papers have (1) improved how users select the right emoji from an increasing emoji lexicon, and (2) employed emojis in new ways and digital materials to enhance communication. We also discovered an increasingly broad scope of functionality across appearance, medium, and affordance. We discuss and offer insights into potential opportunities and challenges emojis will bring for HCI research.
... As a result, our findings support the use of emojis to express feelings, improve communication, and create positive impressions in social-based digital interactions. In particular, our findings show the use of positive emojis (Isabelle Boutet, Megan LeBlanc, Justin A. Chamberland, 2021). Reading storybooks and adult-led conversations improves children's language skills. ...
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The social and emotional growth of young children is significant for fostering empathy, communication, and social interaction. However, education in schools often ignores the linguistic and cultural components around children, thereby hampering the development of some parts of their social-emotional relationships. The ngumbai lawok tradition is one of the cultures of Lampung's coastal communities in appreciating marine products which can be integrated with language to improve children's social and emotional development using image media. This research aims to find out how early childhood learning that combines Ngumbai Lawok language and culture using image media can influence the formation of social and emotional relationships in early childhood. This research methodology is an action research design that combines qualitative and quantitative techniques. The research subjects are children aged 3-6 years at the early childhood education institution in Batanghari sub-district, East Lampung. Data is collected through observations, instructor interviews, questionnaires, documentation to measure children's social and emotional growth, and records of social-emotional development activities. Data analysis includes quantitative and qualitative to compare changes in children's social and emotional development before and after intervention. Research shows that the Numbai Lawok language and culture combined with image media can improve children's ability to interact socially and emotionally. The use of image media helps children understand the cultural concepts of Numbai Lawok and stimulates their language development, and children show improvements in aspects of cooperation, empathy, and communication. This research concludes that the integration of local culture and language with visual media is effective in improving the social emotional skills of young children.
... However, some studies have shown that the use of incongruent emoticons may complicate the interpretation of the sender's mood (Aldunate et al. 2018a, b;Boutet et al. 2021). For example, in ambiguous communication such as sarcastic language, Howman and Filik (2020) found that wink emoticons preceded by positive messages were probably interpreted as sarcasm in young adults. ...
Article
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Emoticons have been considered pragmatic cues that enhance emotional expressivity during computer-mediated communication. Yet, it is unclear how emoticons are processed in ambiguous text-based communication due to incongruences between the emoticon's emotional valence and its context. In this study, we investigated the electrophysiological correlates of contextual influence on the early emotional processing of emoticons, during an emotional congruence judgment task. Participants were instructed to judge the congruence between a text message expressing an emotional situation (positive or negative), and a subsequent emoticon expressing positive or negative emotions. We analyzed early event-related potentials elicited by emoticons related to face processing (N170) and emotional salience in visual perception processing (Early Posterior Negativity, EPN). Our results show that accuracy and Reaction Times depend on the interaction between the emotional valence of the context and the emoticon. Negative emoticons elicited a larger N170, suggesting that the emotional information of the emoticon is integrated at the early stages of the perceptual process. During emoticon processing, a valence effect was observed with enhanced EPN amplitudes in occipital areas for emoticons representing negative valences. Moreover, we observed a congruence effect in parieto-temporal sites within the same time-window, with larger amplitudes for the congruent condition. We conclude that, similar to face processing, emoticons are processed differently according to their emotional content and the context in which they are embedded. A congruent context might enhance the emotional salience of the emoticon (and therefore, its emotional expression) during the early stages of their processing.
... Emoticon prediction based solely on text has garnered attention and has been studied extensively from the perspective of Natural Language Processing. Aoki et al. [2]; Barbieri et al. [3]; Barbieri et al. [4]; Eisner et al. [5]; Ljubesic et al. [6]; and Boutet et al. [7] are few prominent exceptions encompass research dedicated to the semantics and usage of emoticons. An immense amount of research has been conducted in the domain of emoticon prediction based on textual content. ...
Preprint
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The emoticons are symbolic representations that generally accompany the textual content to visually enhance or summarize the true intention of a written message. Although widely utilized in the realm of social media, the core semantics of these emoticons have not been extensively explored based on multiple modalities. Incorporating textual and visual information within a single message develops an advanced way of conveying information. Hence, this research aims to analyze the relationship among sentences, visuals, and emoticons. For an orderly exposition, this paper initially provides a detailed examination of the various techniques for extracting multimodal features, emphasizing the pros and cons of each method. Through conducting a comprehensive examination of several multimodal algorithms, with specific emphasis on the fusion approaches, we have proposed a novel contrastive learning based multimodal architecture. The proposed model employs the joint training of dual-branch encoder along with the contrastive learning to accurately map text and images into a common latent space. Our key finding is that by integrating the principle of contrastive learning with that of the other two branches yields superior results. The experimental results demonstrate that our suggested methodology surpasses existing multimodal approaches in terms of accuracy and robustness. The proposed model attained an accuracy of 91% and an MCC-score of 90% while assessing emoticons using the Multimodal-Twitter Emoticon dataset acquired from Twitter. We provide evidence that deep features acquired by contrastive learning are more efficient, suggesting that the proposed fusion technique also possesses strong generalisation capabilities for recognising emoticons across several modes.
... " In this usage, emojis make invisible facial expressions or inner feelings of the sender visible to the recipient and make it possible to convey playfulness and humour (Kelly & Watts, 2015). Recent studies have demonstrated that facial expression emojis can intensify the emotional valence of text messages, particularly when the emotion of the text message and the displayed emojis are congruent (Boutet et al., 2021;Hand et al., 2022). Just like the nonverbal complement, it has also been suggested that the use of emoji at the end of a sentence can serve to clarify tone of the sentence (Na'aman et al., 2017). ...
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Emojis have become a ubiquitous part of everyday text communication worldwide. Cohn et al. (Cognit Res Princ Implic 4(1):1–18, 2019) studied the grammatical structure of emoji usage among English speakers and found a correlation between the sequence of emojis used and English word order, tending towards an subject–verb–object (SVO) sequence. However, it remains unclear whether emoji usage follows a universal grammar or whether it is influenced by native language grammar. Therefore, this study explored the potential influence of Japanese grammar on emoji usage by Japanese speakers. Twenty adults, all native Japanese speakers, participated in pairs. In Experiment 1, participants engaged in conversations through Google Hangouts on iPads. The experiment consisted of four conversation rounds of approximately 8 min each. The first two rounds involved one participant using only written Japanese and the other using only emojis and punctuation, with roles reversed in the second round. The third round required both participants to use only emojis and punctuation. The results indicated that participants preferred subject–object–verb (SOV) or object–verb (OV) sequences, with OV patterns being more common. This pattern reflects a distinctive attribute of Japanese grammatical structure, marked by the frequent omission of the subject. Experiment 2 substituted emojis for words, showing nouns were more commonly replaced than verbs due to the difficulty in conveying complex meanings. Reduced subject replacements again emphasised Japanese grammatical structure. In essence, emoji usage reflects native language structures, but complexities are challenging to convey, resulting in simplified sequences. This study offers insights for enhancing emoji-based communication and interface design, with implications for translation and broader communication. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s41235-024-00571-9.
... Daniel and Camp (2020) found that participants rated messages that appeared with incongruent emojis as less comprehensible than messages that appeared with congruent emojis. In addition, it took more time to process incongruent messages than congruent messages (Barach et al., 2021, Beyersmann et al., 2022, Boutet et al., 2021, attesting to the difficulty in interpreting incongruent messages. Yet, Weissman et al. (2018) found that incongruent messages were interpreted as conveying the nonliteral meaning of a message (i.e., participants gave greater weight to the emojis than to the text). ...
... 15 This also involves identifying and respecting norms, rules, values, and customs that build adolescents' social behavior and cognition. 16 Social perception is a connecting domain that helps decode and interpret social cues. These cues include verbal messages, verbal communications, paralinguistic information like tones, etc. ...
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Background Social-cognitive skills training (SCST) in a therapeutic setup can result in more positive outcomes when incorporated with psychotherapy, especially among adolescents with minor social-cognitive impairments in their social interactions. It may result in multifarious benefits to mitigate their social-cognitive dysfunction. This study aimed to identify the effects of SCST on interpersonal understanding of social norms in adolescents with low social cognition. Methods In this quasi-experimental research, 80 adolescents (10–19 years) with low social cognition, no previous experience of skills training, and absence of any psychological disorders, especially those that affect their social-cognitive functioning, with assent from the participants and written informed consent from the parents/guardian and a score below 58 on the Need For Social-Cognition Scale, were included. They were randomly allocated into SCST or waitlist control group. SCST consists of 20 sessions with indoor activities, games, and discussions, and it has been arranged for 1 hour per 3 days a week for 3 months. Edinburgh social cognition test (ESCoT) was used to assess the degree of interpersonal understanding of social norms among adolescents as part of pre and posttests. Results The Wilcoxon Sign Ranked Test showed that the interpersonal understanding of social norms after SCST is significantly higher than the interpersonal understanding of social norms SCST with a large effect size. The mean (standard deviation) scores in the ESCoT test improved significantly ( P < 0 .001) following [ W = 0.001, P < .001, r = –1.000]. Conclusion SCST effectively improves the interpersonal understanding of social norms, an essential developmental milestone during adolescence. It highlights the importance of focusing on mental health as a developmental asset that can influence social-cognitive development in the future.
... 11 of the top 20 most popular global emojis are some variation of hearts, with this category alone comprising 15% of total global emoji usage. This is consistent with previous findings; people have a tendency to describe aspects of themselves and groups they belong to in a positive light, and hearts accomplish this aim unambiguously (Boutet et al. 2021). Hearts within bios shared a high mutual information score with sports clubs and celebrities, postulated as a method for users to present their interests to others (Li et al. 2020). ...
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Chapter 4 reviews the various methodological paradigms and measurements which have been used in the study of emoji processing. This is structured under implicit and explicit measures. These include Spatial Stroop tasks, Lexical and semantic decision tasks, Dot Probe tasks, eye-tracking, Approach-Avoidance tasks, Go/No-Go tasks, neuroimaging, memory retrieval tasks, perception and attitude scales, and sentiment scales. Chapter 4 provides a summary of take-away points about general findings across methodological paradigms and where opportunities may reside on how these methodological paradigms might be used to advance the study of emoji processing.
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Application WhatsApp is one of the most popular communication tools nowadays. The use of WhatsApp is widely used in the field of education and human daily life. In addition, through previous studies, explained the difficulty of writing Arabic such as arranging sentences, appropriate terms and the correct method according to the correct Arabic grammar in the aspect of writing instead of in WhatsApp. To find out the level of students' writing, WhatsApp is used especially when it comes to writing. Therefore, this study focuses on exploring the level of WhatsApp usage in Arabic writing skills among Arabic language students at IPTA. The method used in this study uses a quantitative approach in the form of a questionnaire involving 126 students. Each response in the survey was analyzed using SPSS software. Each finding shows the level of WhatsApp application usage in social activities in daily life and the level of WhatsApp usage in learning at public universities. The results indicate a high usage level WhatsApp application usage in social activities in daily life and the level of WhatsApp students usage in learning at public universities with a min value of 4.00 above for most each aspect. The student need to optimize their use of WhatsApp in their learning activities so that their writing skills become more proficient and accurate in exploring the level of WhatsApp usage in Arabic writing especially by using it in daily activities and Stages of WhatsApp activities in learning at IPTA.
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Chapter 2 reviews the range of approaches that researchers have used to study how we process emoji. This includes: face processing, emotion recognition, psycholinguistics, grounded cognition and interpersonal processing. Chapter 2 provides an overview of the main principles of these approaches, the types of research questions these approaches have addressed and the relevant insights gained.
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Sınıf Yönetiminin Temel Kavramları Taner ATMACA - Sinan DAĞ - Nefise Kübra ÇELİK Sınıf Yönetimi Yaklaşımları Fatma ÇOBANOĞLU Sınıf Yönetimini Etkileyen Değişkenler Emine SAKLAN Sınıfta İletişim Tuba YAVAŞ Öğrenci Motivasyonu Celalettin KORKMAZ Sınıf İçi Değerlendirme Mustafa ÖZGENEL - Songül ÖZGENEL Sınıfın Fiziksel Düzeni ve Yönetimi Gülçin Kezban SARAÇOĞLU Zaman Yönetimi Nazım ÇOĞALTAY - Doğan ÖZLÜK İstenilmeyen Öğrenci Davranışlarının Yönetimi Nazım ÇOĞALTAY - Caner DOĞRUSEVER Sınıfta Bir Lider Olarak Öğretmen Aydan ORDU
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Emojis are pictures commonly used in texting. The use and type of emojis has increased in recent years; particularly emojis that are not faces, but rather objects. While prior work on emojis of faces suggest their primary purpose is to convey affect, few have researched the communicative purpose of emojis of objects. In the current work, two experiments assess whether emojis of objects also convey affect. Different populations of participants are shown text messages with or without different emojis of objects, asked to rate the message’s affective content, and indicate their confidence in their ratings. Overall results suggest that emojis of objects communicate positive affect, specifically joy. These findings are framed in the sociological theory of emotion work, suggesting that the time and effort involved in using emojis may help maintain and enhance social relationships.
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Facial expressions constitute a rich source of non-verbal cues in face-to-face communication. They provide interlocutors with resources to express and interpret verbal messages, which may affect their cognitive and emotional processing. Contrarily, computer-mediated communication (CMC), particularly text-based communication, is limited to the use of symbols to convey a message, where facial expressions cannot be transmitted naturally. In this scenario, people use emoticons as paralinguistic cues to convey emotional meaning. Research has shown that emoticons contribute to a greater social presence as a result of the enrichment of text-based communication channels. Additionally, emoticons constitute a valuable resource for language comprehension by providing expressivity to text messages. The latter findings have been supported by studies in neuroscience showing that particular brain regions involved in emotional processing are also activated when people are exposed to emoticons. To reach an integrated understanding of the influence of emoticons in human communication on both socio-cognitive and neural levels, we review the literature on emoticons in three different areas. First, we present relevant literature on emoticons in CMC. Second, we study the influence of emoticons in language comprehension. Finally, we show the incipient research in neuroscience on this topic. This mini review reveals that, while there are plenty of studies on the influence of emoticons in communication from a social psychology perspective, little is known about the neurocognitive basis of the effects of emoticons on communication dynamics.
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Introduction Like nonverbal cues in oral interactions, text‐based emoticons, which are textual portrayals of a writer's facial expressions, are commonly used in electronic device–mediated communication. Little is known, however, about how text‐based emoticons are processed in the human brain. With this study, we investigated whether the text‐based emoticons are processed as face expressions using fMRI. Methods During fMRI scan, subjects were asked to respond by pressing a button, indicating whether text‐based emoticons represented positive or negative emotions. Voxel‐wise analyses were performed to compare the responses and contrasted with emotional versus scrambled emoticons and among emoticons with different emotions. To explore processing strategies for text‐based emoticons, brain activity in the bilateral occipital and fusiform face areas were compared. Results In the voxel‐wise analysis, both emotional and scrambled emoticons were processed mainly in the bilateral fusiform gyri, inferior division of lateral occipital cortex, inferior frontal gyri, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), and parietal cortex. In a percent signal change analysis, the right occipital and fusiform face areas showed significantly higher activation than left ones. In comparisons among emoticons, sad one showed significant BOLD signal decrease in the dACC, the left AIC, the bilateral thalamus, and the precuneus as compared with other conditions. Conclusion The results of this study imply that people recognize text‐based emoticons as pictures representing face expressions. Even though text‐based emoticons contain emotional meaning, they are not associated with the amygdala while previous studies using emotional stimuli documented amygdala activation.
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While the basic nature of irony is saying one thing and communicating the opposite, it may also serve additional social and emotional functions, such as projecting humor or anger. Emoticons often accompany irony in computer-mediated communication, and have been suggested to increase enjoyment of communication. In the current study, we aimed to examine online emotional responses to ironic versus literal comments, and the influence of emoticons on this process. Participants read stories with a final comment that was either ironic or literal, praising or critical, and with or without an emoticon. We used psychophysiological measures to capture immediate emotional responses: electrodermal activity to directly measure arousal and facial electromyography to detect muscle movements indicative of emotional expressions. Results showed higher arousal, reduced frowning, and enhanced smiling for messages with rather than without an emoticon, suggesting that emoticons increase positive emotions. A tendency toward less negative responses (i.e., reduced frowning and enhanced smiling) for ironic than literal criticism, and less positive responses (i.e., enhanced frowning and reduced smiling) for ironic than literal praise suggests that irony weakens the emotional impact of a message. The present findings indicate the utility of a psychophysiological approach in studying online emotional responses to written language.
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We present 2 studies that investigate the use of emoticons in clarifying message intent. We examine sarcasm in particular, which can be especially hard to interpret correctly in written communication. In both studies, participants were required to make the intentions of their messages clear. In the first, they clarified the meaning of existing sentences without altering the wording; in the second, they produced their own sentences. Results provided clear evidence that tongue and wink emoticons are the principal indicators of sarcastic intent, and that ellipsis is associated more with criticism, rather than with sarcasm. These findings highlight the significant role emoticons play in clarifying message intention, compensating for the absence of nonverbal cues in written communication.
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This research investigated how emojis can be used in text messaging to communicate perceived responsiveness, guide impression formation, and contribute to reflected appraisal. Participants (N = 179) disclosed a positive and negative event to a responder (a confederate) over iMessage. Participants were randomly assigned to receive either text only responses or a mixture of text and emoji responses from the responder. For positive self-disclosures, participants had higher ratings of perceived responsiveness when there was convergence in emoji use between the participant and responder than when there was divergence. In other words, participants rated the confederate higher in responsiveness when both or neither used emojis (converged) than when only one used emojis (diverged). There were no effects of emoji use on perceived responsiveness for negative self-disclosures. Additionally, following the set of interactions, participants had more positive impressions of the responder and more positive perceptions of how the responder felt towards the participant (reflected appraisal) when there was convergence rather than divergence in emoji use. Discussion centers around whether emojis can serve as a substitute for nonverbal cues typically found in face-to-face conversations.
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Emoji are increasingly used for emotional expression in computer-mediated communications and represent a relevant source of information for consumer companies about consumer’ food-related attitudes and behaviours. However, given that emoji convey a wide range of meanings an in-depth understanding of how consumers interpret them is necessary to enable their use in food-related consumer research. The purpose of this research was to explore consumers' interpretations of facial emoji. In an online survey with 1084 adults from the USA, an open-ended question was used to uncover meanings associated to 33 common facial emoji (in Apple platform rendition iOS 6.0). Participants also evaluated the emotional valence and arousal of the emoji using Self-Assessment Manikins (SAM). The latter confirmed that facial emoji can span broad ranges of emotional valence and arousal and convey a corresponding range of different emotions. Although emoji conveyed their unique and intended meaning, semantic meanings were multiple and bestowed by associations of varying strength depending on the specific emoji being considered. This emphasised that emoji interpretation and use can be flexible, as also seen in internet resources dedicated to emoji meaning. Implications for food-related consumer research are discussed, as well as in social media research.
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Participants' eye movements were measured as they read sentences in which individual letters within words were rotated. Both the consistency of direction and the magnitude of rotation were manipulated (letters rotated all in the same direction, or alternately clockwise and anti-clockwise, by 30° or 60°). Each sentence included a target word that was manipulated for frequency of occurrence. Our objectives were threefold: To quantify how change in the visual presentation of individual letters disrupted word identification, and whether disruption was consistent with systematic change in visual presentation; to determine whether inconsistent letter transformation caused more disruption than consistent letter transformation; and to determine whether such effects were comparable for words that were high and low frequency to explore the extent to which they were visually or linguistically mediated. We found that disruption to reading was greater as the magnitude of letter rotation increased, although even small rotations affected processing. The data also showed that alternating letter rotations were significantly more disruptive than consistent rotations; this result is consistent with models of lexical identification in which encoding occurs over units of more than one adjacent letter. These rotation manipulations also showed significant interactions with word frequency on the target word: Gaze durations and total fixation duration times increased disproportionately for low-frequency words when they were presented at more extreme rotations. These data provide a first step towards quantifying the relative contribution of the spatial relationships between individual letters to word recognition and eye movement control in reading.
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The field of nonverbal communication (NVC) has a long history involving many cue modalities, including face, voice, body, touch, and interpersonal space; different levels of analysis, including normative, group, and individual differences; and many substantive themes that cross from psychology into other disciplines. In this review, we focus on NVC as it pertains to individuals and social interaction. We concentrate specifically on (a) the meanings and correlates of cues that are enacted (sent) by encoders and (b) the perception of nonverbal cues and the accuracy of such perception. Frameworks are presented for conceptualizing and understanding the process of sending and receiving nonverbal cues. Measurement issues are discussed, and theoretical issues and new developments are covered briefly. Although our review is primarily oriented within social and personality psychology, the interdisciplinary nature of NVC is evident in the growing body of research on NVC across many areas of scientific inquiry. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Psychology Volume 70 is January 4, 2019. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
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During communication, people rely on both linguistic messages and paralinguistic cues to convey information. A question then arises concerning the neurocognitive mechanism underlying the integration of multimodal sources of information during communication. Within such a background, this study compares the early processing stages between network emoticons and emotional words, as both involve emotional content, by recording the N170 of event-related potentials. We found that the N170 elicited by emoticons showed higher amplitude and longer latency than the N170 by words over right occipital-Temporal region. Additionally, the brain activation pattern of emoticons showed the right hemisphere dominance and that of words showed the left hemisphere dominance. These data indicate differential neurobasis underlying processing paralanguage such as network words versus real words.
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The assessment of emoji questionnaires as a method in food-related consumer research is furthered by this methodological study aimed at exploring the extent to which they can be used with a range of population segments. In the first part of the paper, a web-based survey was implemented to assess differences in the interpretation of 33 facial emoji using a check-all-that-apply (CATA) question. Results showed that while emoji interpretation was not influenced by age and frequency of emoji/emoticon use in computer-mediated communications, age-related differences existed for a few emoji. In the second part of the paper, differences in the completion of emoji questionnaires used to measure product-elicited emotional associations were assessed across four studies involving the evaluation of written stimuli and tasted food samples. Gender and age did not influence consumer ability to describe and discriminate between stimuli, eliciting emoji profiles that were highly similar. Among more frequent users of emoji/emoticon, the average number of emoji used to characterise the stimuli was significant higher than among less frequent users, and there was a tendency toward greater discrimination, but the differences were small and of little concern regarding ability of the less frequent emoji/emoticon users' ability to perform the research task. The findings of this research provide preliminary evidence about the suitability of emoji surveys to measure product-related emotional associations with different consumer populations.
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While previous work has focused on the positive impact of smiles on interpersonal perceptions, this research proposes and finds that smile intensity differentially affects two fundamental dimensions of social judgments-warmth and competence. A marketer displaying a broad smile, compared to a slight smile, is more likely to be perceived by consumers as warmer but less competent. Furthermore, the facilitative effect of smile intensity on warmth perceptions is more prominent among promotion-focused consumers and in low-risk consumption contexts, while the detrimental effect of smile intensity on competence perceptions is more likely to occur among prevention-focused consumers and in high-risk consumption situations. Field observations in a crowdfunding context further indicate that the effects of smile intensity on warmth and competence perceptions have downstream consequences on actual consumer behaviors. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Journal of Consumer Research, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Purpose Nowadays, computer-mediated communication is an inherent part of consumers’ daily interactions. That kind of communication, however, is associated with limited options to express emotions and, thus, impairs smooth interactions. Considering these shortcomings, existing research has paid attention to the use of smileys and examines their impacts on communication. Nevertheless, little is known about the effects of smileys on the receivers’ emotions as well as on the interaction between the communication partners. Against this background, the appropriateness of smileys in causing emotional contagion in computer-mediated communication is investigated. That interpersonal mechanism fosters harmonic interactions and strengthens the relationship between interaction partners by sharing emotions. Design/methodology/approach Field data of 1,745 females were obtained through an online experiment applying two scenarios that only differ by the use of either a positive or a negative smiley. The appropriateness of both smileys to express positive or negative emotions was pretested in a study with 18 respondents. Findings Findings support the assumption that emotions expressed by smileys affect receivers’ emotions through the process of emotional contagion. Furthermore, the effects of the negative smiley on the emotions of the receivers are moderated by the receivers’ susceptibility to emotional contagion. Originality/value Findings contribute to current research on computer-mediated communication by offering a deeper understanding of the impacts of smileys on interactions. In that way, the present study underlines the suitability of smileys to stimulate emotional contagion in a ‘cueless’ environment.
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First impressions are heavily influenced by emotional expressions such as smiles. In face-to-face contact, smiling individuals are perceived as warmer and as more competent than nonsmiling individuals. In computer-mediated communication, which is primarily text-based, the “smiley” (☺) constitutes the digital representation of a smile. But is a smiley a suitable replacement for a smile? We conducted three experiments to examine the impact of smiley use on virtual first impressions in work-related contexts. Our findings provide first-time evidence that, contrary to actual smiles, smileys do not increase perceptions of warmth and actually decrease perceptions of competence. Perceptions of low competence in turn undermined information sharing. The adverse effects of smiley use are moderated by the formality of the social context and mediated by perceptions of message appropriateness. These results indicate that a smiley is not a smile. The findings have implications for theorizing on the social functionality of virtual emotional expressions.
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We draw parallels between emoticons in textual communication and gesture in signed language with respect to the interdependence of codes by describing two contexts under which the behavior of emoticons in textual communication resembles that of gesture in speech. Generalizing from those findings, we propose that gesture is likely characterized by a nuanced interdependence with language whether signed, spoken or texted.
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Emoji are increasingly popular in computer-mediated communications, and people often use them spontaneously. This indicates a potential to harness emoji for use in consumer research. However, little is known about how consumers interpret emoji and what meanings are associated to different emoji. In a study of 33 facial emoji, conducted with Chinese consumers (n=1084), the present research begins to close this knowledge gap. Data were collected in an online survey that asked participants to select words they perceived as being applicable for describing the emotional meaning of the emoji (CATA question with 39 terms). The studied emoji spanned a broad range of emotions, which varied in valence (e.g., smiling face vs. angry face) and arousal (e.g., sleepy face and face with stuck out tongue and winking eye). A strong association with one emotion/mood was established for 15 emoji, and associations of lesser strength with several but related emotions/moods was established for 10 emoji. The remaining emoji (n=8) were associated with different moods and emotions, indicating multiple and unrelated meanings. Emoji with similar facial expression had largely similar meanings (e.g., neutral face and expressionless face; and the different smiling face emoji). For most emoji, consumers’ interpretations corresponded to meanings listed in internet resources, and there was also concordance between the empirical results and the internet meanings with regard to multiple words being applicable to describing every emoji. Validation of the established meanings is required, and in the future consideration should be given to agreement/disagreement among consumers in emoji meaning. Extension of the research to other consumer populations and emoji is needed.
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Mobile instant messaging is the communication technology revolution that is changing the way people communicate. The adoption rate is surging and the massive growth is experienced worldwide. Prior studies on instant messaging have been primarily concerned with its task-relevant or functional aspects, while less attention is paid to social interaction aspects. Drawing from media richness theory, present research highlights that social interaction factors can be facilitated by an enriched communication channel to create closer interpersonal social relationships. Specifically, the findings illustrate that the combined effect of text messaging and emoticon use increases information richness, which leads to perceived playfulness in mobile instant messaging. In addition, the perceived playfulness fostered in the instant messaging process plays a driving role in facilitating social connectedness, identity expressiveness between users and advocacy of mobile instant messaging usage.
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Emojis have been widely used to simplify emotional expression and enrich user experience. As an interesting practice of ubiquitous computing, emojis are adopted by Internet users from many different countries, on many devices (particularly popular on smartphones), and in many applications. The "ubiquitous" usage of emojis enables us to study and compare user behaviors and preferences across countries and cultures. We present an analysis on how smartphone users use emojis based on a very large data set collected from a popular emoji keyboard. The data set contains a complete month of emoji usage of 3.88 million active users from 212 countries and regions. We demonstrate that the categories and frequencies of emojis used by these users provide rich signals for the identification and the understanding of cultural differences of smartphone users. Users from different countries present significantly different preferences on emojis, which complies with the well-known Hofstede's cultural dimensions model.
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We live in a digital society that provides a range of opportunities for virtual interaction. Consequently, emojis have become popular for clarifying online communication. This presents an exciting opportunity for psychologists as these prolific online behaviours can be used to help reveal something unique about contemporary human behaviour
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Recent studies have suggested that pupil diameter, like the "old-new" ERP, may be a measure of memory. Because the amplitude of the old-new ERP is enhanced for items encoded in the context of repetitions that are distributed (spaced), compared to massed (contiguous), we investigated whether pupil diameter is similarly sensitive to repetition. Emotional and neutral pictures of natural scenes were viewed once or repeated with massed (contiguous) or distributed (spaced) repetition during incidental free viewing and then tested on an explicit recognition test. Although an old-new difference in pupil diameter was found during successful recognition, pupil diameter was not enhanced for distributed, compared to massed, repetitions during either recognition or initial free viewing. Moreover, whereas a significant old-new difference was found for erotic scenes that had been seen only once during encoding, this difference was absent when erotic scenes were repeated. Taken together, the data suggest that pupil diameter is not a straightforward index of prior occurrence for natural scenes. © 2015 Society for Psychophysiological Research.
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This experimental study examined the effects of pictographs (typographic symbols typically used to express emotion) and quoting (responding to a message by including full or partial quotes from that message) on the perception of flaming (hostile verbal behavior) in electronic mail. It was hypothesized that (a) the presence of pictographs would reduce perceptions of flaming and (b) the use of quoting would increase perceptions of flaming. The results were generally supportive of the first hypothesis. A significant moderating effect on perceptions of flaming was observed in messages with pictographs, although that effect diminished as the intensity of hostility increased. Limited support was found for the second hypothesis; results suggest quoting may increase perceptions of flaming only when messages are overtly hostile. In addition to these findings, the study advances a clearer understanding of when a message becomes a flame, as the results suggest flaming is most clearly associated with the expression of antagonism.
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Current approaches to measuring people’s everyday usage of technology-based media and other computer-related activities have proved to be problematic as they use varied outcome measures, fail to measure behavior in a broad range of technology-related domains and do not take into account recently developed types of technology including smartphones. In the present study, a wide variety of items, covering a range of up-to-date technology and media usage behaviors. Sixty-six items concerning technology and media usage, along with 18 additional items assessing attitudes toward technology, were administered to two independent samples of individuals, comprising 942 participants. Factor analyses were used to create 11 usage subscales representing smartphone usage, general social media usage, Internet searching, e-mailing, media sharing, text messaging, video gaming, online friendships, Facebook friendships, phone calling, and watching television in addition to four attitude-based subscales: positive attitudes, negative attitudes, technological anxiety/dependence, and attitudes toward task-switching. All subscales showed strong reliabilities and relationships between the subscales and pre-existing measures of daily media usage and Internet addiction were as predicted. Given the reliability and validity results, the new Media and Technology Usage and Attitudes Scale was suggested as a method of measuring media and technology involvement across a variety of types of research studies either as a single 60-item scale or any subset of the 15 subscales.
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G*Power (Erdfelder, Faul, & Buchner, 1996) was designed as a general stand-alone power analysis program for statistical tests commonly used in social and behavioral research. G*Power 3 is a major extension of, and improvement over, the previous versions. It runs on widely used computer platforms (i.e., Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Mac OS X 10.4) and covers many different statistical tests of the t, F, and chi2 test families. In addition, it includes power analyses for z tests and some exact tests. G*Power 3 provides improved effect size calculators and graphic options, supports both distribution-based and design-based input modes, and offers all types of power analyses in which users might be interested. Like its predecessors, G*Power 3 is free.
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Affective computing holds the promise of creating effortless, integrated, and automatic ways of communicating emotions within our intimate social network. This could augment awareness systems and connectedness devices, reducing loneliness and improving health and well-being. Through two experiments, we investigate the effects of quantity and automaticity of emotion communication on perceived intimacy in mediated settings. In the first experiment (N=48), we manipulated the number of communicated emoticons. Results show that increases in communicated emoticon quantity lead to strong increases in perceived intimacy. In the second experiment (N=34), we compare automatic and user-initiated communication of emoticons. Results show that user-initiated communication of emoticons is experienced as more intimate than automatic communication. These results are discussed in light of the interpersonal process model of intimacy and can help the design of applications aimed at improving social interactions through affective communication technology.