Abstract
Emoticons are graphical representations of emotions used in virtual communication. We explored patterns of emoticon use in a sample of 86702 Facebook users (aged 16 to 60, 59% women). We analyzed the total number and type of emoticons posted to public Facebook feeds as a function of a user's gender, age and Big Five personality characteristics. In our sample, 90% of Facebook users employed emoticons. The most popular 15 emoticons represented 99.6% of all emoticons posted. Our results further showed that the frequency of emoticon usage was predicted mainly by age and gender, explaining 16% of the variance, whereas user's personality scores explained <2%. These findings suggest that emoticon usage may assist in profiling user's demographic, but not necessarily psychological traits.
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