Emoji meanings (pleasure–arousal–dominance dimensions) in consumer research: Between‐country and interpersonal differences

Abstract

In line with the increasing popularity of emoji, the need for methodological research into these pictorial representations of emotion remains.The present research contributes to this goal by continuing to establish the meaning of emoji and exploring these according to between-country and interpersonal differences. The emoji (n = 12) were selected to span the valence × arousal emotion space, and the PAD model (Pleasure-Arousal-Dominance) was used to establish emoji meaning for the three dimensions, operationalized as measurement on 6 × 3 semantic differentials. Participants in the main study came from three countries-Germany, Singapore, and Malaysia (n = 2465), and a supplementary study included the United Kingdom and New Zealand (n = 600) (subset of four emoji). The results confirmed that emoji meanings according to the PAD model were largely similar between countries (albeit not identical). There were multiple minor significant differences for individual emoji, and where these existed, they often related to the dimension of Arousal, prompting a need for further investigation. Interpersonal differences were examined for gender (men and women), age group (18-45 and 46-69 years old), and frequency of emoji use. Again, significant differences were smaller rather than larger and supported the notion that emoji are generally applicable for multicountry research. However, caution regarding the participants who use emoji infrequently may be warranted.

COVID-19 case prediction using emotion trends via Twitter emoji analysis: A case study in Japan

“…The “fear” emoji (17.1% accuracy) was also answered as “surprise.” Also in the work of Kutsuzawa et al ( 38 ), they found that, for both young and middle-aged groups, in general, emoji were similarly clustered in Arousal-Valence space, but some emoji were interpreted differently among different age groups. Schouteten et al ( 39 ) found that emoji meanings (pleasure-arousal-dominance dimensions) are largely similar in 5 countries (Germany, Singapore, Malaysia, UK, and New Zealand). Still, misunderstandings of emoji were also observed ( 40 ), for instance, “praying hands” misunderstood as “a high five,” “irritation, anger, and contempt” misunderstood as “pride face,” and “confused” misunderstood as “frustrated and sad face.” Despite the results of large similarity in interpreting emoji meanings, deeper interpretation of the true underlying emotion is challenging.…”

Emojis en Tareas de Categorización. Una Nueva Forma de Evaluar el Conocimiento Conceptual

“…Su uso se ha extendido de tal forma que es concebido como un "lenguaje emergente" (Danesi, 2017) e incluso, actualmente se están implementando en el ámbito de la salud (Halverson et al, 2023;Moisset et al, 2022). Aunque estén presentes en muchos espacios, su incorporación en la ciencia es aún una novedad (Schouteten et al, 2023).…”

The Effect of Response Conditions on Food Images-Evoked Emotions Measured Using the Valence × Arousal Circumplex-Inspired Emotion Questionnaire (CEQ)

“…For example, several modified versions of existing emotion-related questionnaires, such as the EsSense Profile ® , have been introduced [33,34], including the EsSense25 comprised of 25 emotion terms [33]. New types of self-reported emotion questionnaires have also been developed in recent years [35][36][37]. In 2020, Jaeger et al [35] developed a single-response questionnaire inspired by a circumplex model of core affect, referred to as "the valence × arousal circumplex-inspired emotion questionnaire" (CEQ).…”