Effects of emoticons and pictograms on communication of emotional states via mobile text-messaging

Abstract

In computer-mediated communication, the lack of nonverbal cues such as facial expression, tone of voice, gestures leads to difficulties in communicating emotional states. Emoticons and pictograms are visual cues suggestive of facial expression or emotion and have been recently used as nonverbal surrogates in computer-mediated communication. The present study investigated whether and how visual cues (emoticons or pictograms) influence emotional communication in mobile text-messaging that conveys the following emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, or anxiety. The results showed that visual cues depicting a smile facilitate the communication of happiness, irrespective of the type of cue. The communication of anger was also facilitated by a pictogram depicting this emotion, but the intensity of sadness was relieved by a crying face pictogram. In the case of anxiety, visual cues had no effect on emotional communication. The rated degree of emotion differed between pictograms which are converted according to the mapping table but have different appearances. Furthermore, we found that the colors of pictograms facilitate emotional communication. These findings help understanding of the effective transmission of emotional states in text-messaging on mobile phones.View full abstract