The Emoji Spatial Stroop Task: Exploring the impact of vertical positioning of emoji on emotional processing

Spatial Affective Interaction (SAI): A Framework for Research on Affective Processing by Manual Interactions with Digital Objects

“…Certain research areas focus on stimuli with particular content to address specific questions. For example, regarding (un)healthy food (e.g., Kahveci et al, 2021;Meule et al, 2020), smoking-related content (e.g., Eiler et al, 2020), phobia-related content (e.g., spiders; Rinck et al, 2021), or emotional faces (e.g., Flusberg et al, 2023;Kaye et al, 2022). It might be important to clarify the affective implications resulting from the direct interaction with such stimuli.…”

“…Another reasonable expectation stemming from the space-valence congruency is that the perceived valence of a stimulus might be reinforced when it matches the assumed valence of a spatial location (positive-up; negative-down) i.e., spatial affective connotation (e.g., Albrecht & Carbon, 2014). In support of this idea, Kaye et al (2022) found that positive Emojis (iconic faces representing emotional states) were evaluated more positively when displayed "up" on a screen, and negative Emojis were evaluated more negatively when displayed "down". Similarly, other findings support affective connotation effects of this type, within the lateral space.…”

Rage against the machine: exploring violence and emotion in conspiracy narratives on Parler

“…Social media environments include information beyond post text, such as username, profile photo, added links or media, or emojis which we did not analyze. Emojis and attached media can include crucial information about the text that convey emotions or context (Kaye et al, 2021;Kaye & Schweiger, 2023;Wiseman & Gould, 2018).…”

Congruent or conflicting? The interaction between emoji and textual sentence is not that simple!

“…In addressing how emoji and textual sentences interact, numerous researchers emphasize the alignment between verbal and non-verbal 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.…”