The study of perception bias toward affect emoticon on SNS among individuals with emotion dysregulation

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study investigated the perception bias on affective emoticons in individuals with emotion dysregulation and a maladaptive regulation strategy. A total of 289 students from the university completed 1) the Cognitive Emotional Regulation Questionnaire, including both adaptive and maladaptive cognitive emotional strategies, 2) the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale, 3) an emoticon rating in terms of perception intensity, based on 6 basic emotions. Twenty-six emoticons from KakaoTalk, a popular messenger application in South Korea, were used after arousal whereupon valence ratings were obtained. The results revealed that individuals with emotion dysregulation significantly displayed stronger perception to ambiguous affect emoticons in anger and fear emotions, as compared to the control. These findings suggest that individuals with emotion dysregulation may be more influenced by negative affect stimuli which then leads to daily negative affect bias.