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

Brigitte Fischer,Cornelia Herbert

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.645173

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.

Highlights

In daily life and especially in face-to-face (F2F) communication, humans are able to express their feelings and states by changing their emotional facial expressions
95.8% of faces were rated with a score of 5 (“partly”) or higher, emoji achieved 83.3% in this value range
The first hypothesis stated no differences in emotionality scores between the stimulus categories of faces and emoji, but higher ratings for both faces and emoji compared to emoticons

Summary

Introduction

In daily life and especially in face-to-face (F2F) communication, humans are able to express their feelings and states by changing their emotional facial expressions. Emoji as Affective Symbols communication emoji or emoticons are available to still be able to express our feelings to our chatting partners. Emoji illustrate much more than only facial expressions, feelings or emotions, and abstract concepts, hand gestures, animals, plants, objects or activities (Rodrigues et al, 2018). At the moment 3.304 emoji exist to express oneself emotionally (Emojipedia, 2020)

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Conclusion