The Effect of Emoji on Person Perception

Muhammad Rizal Fadhli Wibowo*, Rufaida Ats-Tsiqoh, Siti Sangadah, Evy Sulfiani Komala, Aris Budi Utomo

Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Padjadjaran, Jl. Raya Bandung-Sumedang Km. 21, Jatinangor, 45363, Indonesia

*E-mail: rizal.fadhli@gmail.com

Abstract

The use of chatting applications as a way to communicate is rising in this digital era. There are some differences between application-based chatting and face-to-face chatting. Despite the absence of some features that exist in normal conversation, people could still generate impressions using existing information or cues. Previous studies indicated that emoticons and smileys could affect people’s impressions about others. The current research was conducted to find out whether emoji would yield similar results. A sample of 48 college students was involved. An attempt to control the effect of participants’ moods was also conducted in this study. The experiment adopted a between-participants- posttest-only design with two experimental groups and a control group. Participants were given a written conversation between two people, which contained smiling emoji, disturbed emoji, or no emoji. Using the Kruskal-Wallis test, p value = 0.021 was obtained and it was lower than the alpha (p<.05), indicating that there was a significant difference between the three groups. Implications to practice that are related to impression management and future researches, such as conducting another identical researches in work setting and the use of different age groups, are discussed further in this article.

Keywords— emoji; experiment; person perception; social cognition; social media

1. Introduction Indonesia from the total of 255 million, use social media (Wijaya, 2015). Instant messaging or chatting becomes Aristotle stated that human is a social animal (Aronson, one of the features of many social medias. It has been 2011). Therefore, communication plays an integral part of widely used for social communication. In contrast with our daily life. Communication is a complex process that face-to-face communication, instant messaging and involves more than plain speaking, writing, and words chatting is in written form and lack nonverbal elements interpretation (Jibril & Abdullah, 2013). It involves (Jibril & Abdullah, 2013). components such as language content, grammar, and nonverbal cues (Rezabek & Cochenour, 1998). Hall With the absence of nonverbal cues, forming impression (2007) defined nonverbal cues as all potentially accurately might be more difficult in social media. informative behaviors that are not purely linguistic in Comparing face-to-face and online acquaintances, Fuller content such as facial expressions, posture, gesture, pitch, (1996) found that those who use electronic media talking speed, and many more. To convey emotion is consistently misinterpret other individuals’ personality in commonly assumed as the main function of nonverbal several personality dimensions. Moreover, the Fuller behavior, although there are several other purposes served (1996) study found electronic media users often perceived by nonverbal cues in daily life, for example, conveying their partners as being cold and logical, suggesting that interpersonal attitudes, such as dominance or insult (Hall, emotional expression was in some way limited or 2007). restricted (Fullwood & Martino, 2007). A similar study was performed by Rouse and Haas (2003), who noted that Ever since entering the digital era, communication has there was small correlation between scores of changed its form. Nowadays, social media serves as a new personalities and an online chat partner’s perceptions of way to connect people. According to a report released by that person. Furthermore, those who have been using the We Are Social, globally, there are 2.307 billion active Internet for longer periods of time did not have better social media users, rising 10% from the previous year congruence between scores. No additional nonverbal cues (Kemp, 2016). In Indonesia, 72 million people in were involved in both the Fuller (1996) and Rouse and Haas (2003) as both studies were based only on the text of a written conversation. This lack of social contextual cues discovered that nonverbal cues affected message resulted in an increased difficulty in establishing common interpretation and person perception. Smilies, however, ground, making it harder to communicate emotional and exerted a stronger impact on participant’s personal mood relational information (Fullwood & Martino, 2007). than emoticons did. Wang et al. (2014) tested the effect of emoticons on the acceptance of negative feedback. They In order to compensate the lack of nonverbal cues, discovered that the use of positive emoticons could emoticons were included to enable a receiver to enhance the perceived good intention of the feedback understand the feeling or the mood of a sender (Wei, 2012 giver and lower the perceived negativity of the message as cited in Jibril & Abdullah, 2013). Emoticons were when the feedback was specific (Wang et al., 2014). invented by a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, Scott E. Fahlman, in 1982 (Kosoff, 2015). Danesi (2009) The present study aimed to examine the effect of emoji on define emoticons as string of keyboard characters that person perception. Previous studies have tested the effect when viewed sideways or any other orientation can be of emoticons. While in this study, emoji will be used seen to suggest a face expressing a particular emotion. instead of emoticons. We hypothesized that the use of Some popular emoticons include the smiley :-) or :), the emoji would have a significant positive impact on person wink ;-), and the yawn :-O (Danesi, 2009). perception. It is suggested that the mood of the interpreter could affect the impressions made about other people Another identical object that can provide nonverbal cues (Forgas & Bower, 1987). Therefore, in this study we is emoji. Emoji were invented in the late 1990s by a aimed to control the mood of the participants by asking Japanese communication firm, NTT DoCoMo (Hern, the mood of the participants in the beginning and taking 2015). Are they different? The word ‘emoji’ means into account the participants’ mood in the assignment. ‘picture character’ was originated from Japanese (Novak This might have never been done before in the previous et al., 2015). Hern (2015) argued that the two are actually studies. different. An emoticon is a typographic display in a text- only medium to convey emotion. Meanwhile, an emoji is 2. Methods a graphic symbol, ideogram, which can represent everything, not only facial expressions, emotions, or A. Sample feelings, but also concepts, ideas, and objects, such as celebration, weather, cars, buildings, foods, beverages, A sample of 48 undergraduate college students of Faculty animals, plants, activities (Kralj Novak et al., 2015). of Psychology Universitas Padjadjaran took part in this Emoticons only use basic text while emoji uses Unicode study. The sample consisted of 13 males (27.08%) and 35 character set (Hern, 2015). Globally, emoji has become females (72.92%). All participants were aged between 17- very famous on smartphones, in chat, and email 20 years old (M=18.38, SD=.570). The participants were applications (Kralj Novak et al., 2015). recruited on campus. Before asked about their willingness to participate, candidates were asked about their current Emoticons were found to have little impact on message mood; either positive, neutral, or negative. Snacks with interpretations (Walther & D’Addario, 2001). Walther and the value of Rp. 5.000,00 were given as incentives. D’Addario (2001) also found that negative emoticons made both positive and negative statements being rated more negative. Another study had been conducted to examine the effect of emoticon on impression formation. Fullwood & Martino, 2007 analyzed the effect of emoticons on impression formation in computer-mediated communication (CMC) with a sample consisted of college students. Findings indicated that the use of emoticons would make someone perceived as being more Figure 1. Research Design extroverted and more agreeable. They also found that female participants perceived higher emotional stability when emoticon was present while male participants perceived chat partners as being less extroverted when no emoticon was present (Fullwood & Martino, 2007).

The use of positive emoticons also made someone being perceived as more agreeable, more open, and more conscientious (Wall et al., 2016). Kalyanaraman and Ivory (2012) conducted a study about the effects of emoticons on impression formation, affect, and cognition in chat transcript. It was found that the use of emoticon made someone being perceived as more friendly and competent. Emoticon also helped participants on remembering the Figure 2. Smiling and Unamused Emoji content of information. Ganster et al. (2012) tested the difference between emoticons and smilies on person perception. Using a diverse sample in term of age, they B. Research Design 3. Results This study adopted a between-participants-posttest-only design. There were two experiment groups and a control Table 1. Mean Rank for Each Group group. The type of manipulation used in this study was the Type of Question N Mean Rank types of variable (Christensen, 2007) where the treatments Total Smiling Emoji 16 29.38 were differed with regard to its’ types. We exercised one Control 16 27.47 Unamused Emoji 16 16.66 treatment for every group. Participants in each group were Total 48 asked to read a written conversation between two people. Participants in control group would read a conversation with no emoji. The first experiment group received a The experiment group that was given a smiling emoji had conversation containing smiling emoji while the a mean rank of 29.38. The control group with no emoji on participants in the second experiment group had the text had a mean rank of 27.47. Meanwhile, the second unamused emoji in the conversation. experiment group that contained unamused emoji on the conversation had a mean rank of 16.66. Kruskal-Wallis C. Instrument test was conducted to examine if there was a significant A written chat conversation and a self-constructed difference between the three groups. P-value of .021 was questionnaire was administered to measure person obtained as a result and it is lower than the alpha level perception. The emoji were put on the [X] sign in the (.05). The results showed that there was a significant conversation (Figure 3). The questionnaire consists of six difference between the experiment groups and the control questions. Participants rated character B from the group. A post-hoc analysis was conducted and no conversation on 6 trait adjectives: friendly, attractive, significant difference was found between scores from the intellect, kind, sincere, and helpful. Participants were group with smiling emoji and the control group. asked to express their degree of agreement for every Significant difference was found between the experiment question on a five-point Likert scale, ranging from group with smiling emoji and the group with unamused strongly disagree to strongly agree. emoji. No significant difference was found between the experiment group with smiling emoji and the control group.

Table 2. Mean Rank for Scores on Each Dimension Jenis Soal Mean Rank Smiling Emoji 30.00 Control 25.31 Friendly Unamused Emoji 18.19 Total Smiling Emoji 26.25 Control 23.94 Attractive Unamused Emoji 23.31 Total Smiling Emoji 27.41 Control 24.69 Intellect Unamused Emoji 21.41 Total Smiling Emoji 26.78 Control 28.09 Unamused Emoji 18.63 Total Figure 3. English Translation of the Conversation Smiling Emoji 29.34 Kind Control 28.25 Unamused Emoji 15.91 Procedure The previously obtained information about Total participants’ moods were used in the assignment process. Smiling Emoji 26.09 Participants in the same category of mood; positive, Control 28.25 neutral, or negative were randomly assigned to either the Unamused Emoji 19.16 control group, the first experiment group, or the second Smiling Emoji 29.34 Control 28.25 experiment group. Each group consisted of 16 participants Sincere Unamused Emoji 15.91 with positive, neutral, and negative moods under the same Total proportion. Participants entered the experiment rooms Smiling Emoji 26.09 individually. Later, they were given a paper with a written Helpful Control 28.25 conversation and were then asked to fill the questionnaire. Unamused Emoji 19.16

Data Analysis Kruskal-Wallis test was used to measure the difference between the three groups. We also This study tested the effect of emoji on six dimensions; conducted an additional Mann-Whitney test to find out friendly, attractive, intellect, kind, sincere, and helpful. whether there was any difference on person perception The use of emoji had significant impact on perception of between genders. friendliness and sincerity. No significant difference was taking part as a research participant. Even without emoji, shown on the other four dimensions. the target character could be rated as having positive traits. This could also provide a possible explanation on An additional analysis using Mann-Whitney was the absence of significant difference between the smiling performed to examine whether there was a significant emoji experiment group with the control group. This is difference between male and female participants. P-value something that needs to be addressed in the future. of .701 was obtained, meaning there was no significant Pretesting the verbal material can be done to produce a difference between scores from male and female more neutral conversation. participants. There was also no difference between male and female on the six dimensions. We can infer that based There were also other limitations at the present study. This on this study, the use of emoji created the same effect in study involved a relatively small sample and college both males in females. students that might not be representative to the whole population. Male and female participants were also not in 4. Discussion the same proportion. Participants’ familiarity to social media conversation and the use of emoji was not This study discovered that emoji influenced person considered. Changing the treatment for the negative emoji perception. Under controlled mood conditions in each might also be performed, since the unamused emoji that group, the use of emoji in the text influenced the was used in this study might not be perceived as negative. perception of the participants. This finding with emoji A more comprehensive instrument that could encompass showed identical result with previous researches using more adjective should also be used for future studies. emoticons (Kalyanaraman & Ivory, 2002; Fullwood & Martino, 2007; Ganster et al., 2012). In this study, no Overall, results indicated that person perception could be difference was found between genders, meaning that affected by the use of emoji. This suggests that emoji can emoji yield the same effect on both male and female. be used to improve the way in which an individual is perceived when communicating in chatting applications. The post-hoc Kruskal-Wallis analysis showed that there As stated by Fullwood and Martino (2007), we always was a significant difference between the two experiment have to consider the context of the communication. groups. Participants in the experiment group that was Although it might be useful to make a good first given smiling emoji rated the character B more positively impression, there might be specific online contexts that than those who were given unamused emoji. Smiling would perceive the use of emoji differently. For example, emoji can make someone being evaluated more positively. in professional relationship, work setting, or in In this study, the use of smiling emoji made participants communicating with older people like a lecturer, the use perceived someone as being more friendly and sincerer. of emoji might not create the same impression. Future The opposite happened with unamused emoji as research under this context is possible to conduct. This participants perceived character B as being less friendly study showed that the use of positive emoji could improve and less sincere. positive impression. Therefore, positive emoji can be useful in several contexts, such as online dating or in- group chats. The current study also considers the This result supports the view that using emoji conveys implications of using negative emoji. It might be better to nonverbal information that is often minimal in social avoid using negative emoji in group chat rooms or in a media communication. The emoji that was used could social media conversation with someone new as it might influence participants’ perception about the target create a negative perception on the perceiver. This study character as being friendlier or less friendly and being sincerer or less sincere. This suggests that emoji can have was conducted in relatively homogenous young age both positive and negative influence on person perception participants. Testing it in a different age group or testing it depending on the type of emoji. Smiling emoji can have a with a sample consisting of people from different age positive effect on person perception. One possible groups might be conducted to gain a more complete explanation is emoji could serve as a nonverbal cue in picture. social media communication the way facial expression does in face-to-face communication. Smiling was 5. Conclusions discovered to have positive impact on person perception (Keating et al., 1981; Lau, 1982; Reis et al., 1990; Otta et This study aimed to discover the effect of emoji on person al., 1993). perception, in which previous studies have tested the effect of emoticons. An attempt to control the There was no significant difference between the group participants’ moods was conducted in this study. In with smiling emoji and the control group. Person summary, using smiling emoji could help being perceived perception is not formed based solely on the nonverbal positively as friendly and sincere. While the use of cues. The verbal message is surely important. The negative emoji could hinder someone from being interpretation toward the message plays an important role perceived positively. Using positive emoji while avoid on making impression about someone (Hancock et al., using negative emoji in online dating or when chatting 2007, Dresner & Herring, 2010). The conversation used in with someone new could help someone form a good this study was a constructive conversation in which the impression. The context of the usage could tentatively target character decided to help another character by influence these results. Therefore, there might be several contexts that could yield different results, such as professional context and communicating with lecturer. Jibril, T. A., Abdullah, M. H. (2013). 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