Emoji Alter the Perception of Emotion in Affectively Neutral Text messages

Abstract

Previous studies of emoji effects on text sentiment demonstrate mixed findings. Further, these studies are limited by confounds, e.g., underlying text sentiment, lack of ecological validity. We considered emoji effects on the emotional valence of affectively neutral English-language text messages. We additionally considered differences across US-American, British, and Danish participants. 217 participants considered screenshots of question-and-response text message exchanges with/without emoji, in a 4 (emoji type: no emoji, negative, neutral, positive) × 3 (nationality: American, British, Danish) mixed-factors design. Cumulative link mixed-effects models demonstrated that messages + negative emoji were rated more-negatively than any other emoji conditions. Responses + positive emoji were rated more-positively than any other emoji condition. Responses + neutral emoji and responses without emoji were perceived as equally emotive. There was no emoji type × nationality interaction, suggesting that emoji effects were consistent across participants. Findings are considered viz linguistic processing, social interactions, education, marketing, and public health interventions.

A Study of Modal Salient Beliefs in The Behavior of Using Dialect Stickers

“…Existing studies on emoji usage behavior, one is to explore the emoji usage behavior itself in order to gain insight into its behavioral patterns and communication trends; the other is to explore the user's preferences and attitudes, as well as the communication effects of emoji in social interaction by analyzing emoji usage behavior. Emojis can help users express emotions during the communication process (Wall et al, 2016), and emojis can change the perception of emotion in the original sentiment of a text message (Neel et al, 2023). It can also convey semantics (Na'aman et al, 2017), becoming an auxiliary language in the communication process.…”

Editorial: Language and the digital frontier

“…They conducted two experiments. They found that texts paired with positive emoji were rated more positively than texts paired with negative emoji (as Boutet et al, 2021;Hand et al, 2022;Neel et al, 2023). Furthermore, texts paired with stronger-valenced emoji were rated as less neutral compared to texts paired with milder-valenced emoji.…”

The power of emojis: The impact of a leader’s use of positive emojis on members’ creativity during computer-mediated communications

“…Emojis have been observed to progressively replace the role of emoticons in computer-mediated communications [17]. Although emojis are often used and interpreted the same way emoticons are [18,19], neurological evidence suggests that emojis are more likely to be perceived as human faces than emoticons [20][21][22]. Therefore, in the current research, we use the term emojis.…”