A study on the embarrassment of senders who missend emojis with opposite meanings on social apps: taking WeChat as an example

Abstract

With the increasing popularity of social apps, sending emojis has become a very common way of expressing one's emotions. However, situations often arise when people send the wrong emoji by mistake, or sometimes even an emoji with an opposite meaning, which can cause embarrassment to the sender. Taking WeChat as an example, which is widely used in Chinese communities, this study summarizes 10 types of dialogue situations in which the meaning of an emoji is wrongly sent and 12 types of emotional components that are related to embarrassment. The purpose of this study was to analyze the extent to which the 12 emotional components that are associated with embarrassment actually explain what embarrassment is, as well as the different degrees of embarrassment among the different genders and age groups. The results showed that (1) among the emotional components of embarrassment, shame has the highest explanation degree for embarrassment; (2) males are more likely to be affected by embarrassment than females; and (3) users aged 18-25 and 26-30 years are more likely to be affected by embarrassment than those aged between 31 and 40 when they mistakenly send WeChat emojis. This study provides a reference value for their sustainable psychological impact on social app users.

Emoji Culture on the WeChat Platform

“…In the Chinese context, emoticons often have different meanings in different situations, and the same goes for Emojis. The reason why people have different understandings of the meaning of an Emoji is that the same Emoji is displayed differently on different mobile platforms [14]. Even in the face of the same expression, people's feelings are quite different.…”