The Effects of Adding Emojis to Text Messages on Emotional Impressions and Recollection of Textual Content

Abstract

Emojis or emoticons are commonly used to convey emotional status to others in text-based, online communication. While several studies have investigated the influence of emojis on emotional processing, the influence of emojis on the recognition of messages is less understood. In the present study, we investigated the effects of emojis accompanying a short text message on the emotional impressions and memory of the messages. The results suggested that emojis modulated the emotional processing of the messages; the emotional arousal of the messages increased by adding emojis, and the emotional valence of messages was biased towards the valence of emojis. Furthermore, we found that the memory of the text messages was modulated by emojis; the recognition performance of the positive text messages was improved when they appeared with negative emojis. These results implied that emojis would have an impact on cognitive processing, as well as the emotional processing of text messages.