Emoji as Affective Symbols: Affective Judgments of Emoji, Emoticons, and Human Faces Varying in Emotional Content

Abstract

An important function of emoji as communicative symbols is to convey emotional content from sender to receiver in computer-mediated communication, e. g., WhatsApp. However, compared with real faces, pictures or words, many emoji are ambiguous because they do not symbolize a discrete emotion or feeling state. Thus, their meaning relies on the context of the message in which they are embedded. Previous studies investigated affective judgments of pictures, faces, and words suggesting that these stimuli show a typical distribution along the big two emotion dimensions of valence and arousal. Also, emoji and emoticons have been investigated recently for their affective significance. The present study extends previous research by investigating affective ratings of emoji, emoticons and human faces and by direct comparison between them. In total, 60 stimuli have been rated by 83 participants (eight males, age: 18–49 years), using the non-verbal Self-Assessment Manikin Scales for valence and arousal. The emotionality of the stimuli was measured on a 9-point Likert scale. The results show significant main effects of the factors “stimulus category” and “discrete emotion” including emotionality, valence and arousal. Also, the interaction between these two main factors was significant. Emoji elicited highest arousal, whereas stimuli related to happiness were rated highest in valence across stimulus categories. Angry emoji were rated highest in emotionality. Also, the discrete emotion was best recognized in emoji, followed by human face stimuli and lastly emoticons.

Influence of Emojis on Online Trust Among College Students

“…Only when the individual propensity to trust is low, emoji could play a key role in online trust between acquaintances. This finding is consistent with those of previous studies and proves, once again, the fragility of new relationships within contemporary social networks and the important role of individual levels of trust ( Fischer and Herbert, 2021 ). Individuals with high levels of propensity to trust are prone to make positive judgments regarding the abilities, goodwill, integrity, and other characteristics of other people.…”

“…Online social media frequently use specialized languages, such as abbreviations, hashtags, emoticons, and emojis as substitutes to compensate for the absence of non-verbal cues ( Fathiya, 2018 ; Fischer and Herbert, 2021 ). Generally speaking, an emoji is a small digital image or icon used to express an idea or emotion ( Ganster et al, 2012 ; Singh et al, 2019 ).…”

Nudge and bias in subjective ratings? The role of icon sets in determining ratings of icon characteristics

“…Other important stimulus characteristics such as colour and trust also need to be considered in future research, since very little systematic research has examined these important icon characteristics (but see Horton, 1994;Liu et al, 2021;Richardson, Revell, Kim, et al, 2021). Similarly, there is a growing need for better understanding of emojis, which are increasingly used in online media including quantification of their particular characteristics (see Daniel & Camp, 2020;Fischer & Herbert, 2021;Rodrigues et al, 2018). Despite these caveats, the potential bias resulting from the rating context in subjective ratings of icons is clear and should be noted by icon designers and researchers alike, particularly where time-critical or safety-critical icons are being evaluated.…”

Using Emoji in Response to Customer Reservation Requests and Service Reviews

“…Paralinguistic cues-and emoji, in particular-are used to customize messages, help disambiguate and provide context to a message, signal the intention of the sender, or express emotionality, support, and affection [8][9][10][11][12][13]. For example, recent studies showed that messages with (vs. without) emoji were perceived as emotionally more intense [14] and that the emotionality conveyed by emoji and human faces is similar [15]. This suggests that emojis are effective cues to transmit emotional content in written communication (but see also [16]).…”