Digital Communication: The Smiley Effect: How Emojis Increase Perceived Closeness

Small smiley, big impact: Emojis in text messages can increase satisfaction and perceived closeness in friendships. Communication scientist Eun Huh from the University of Texas at Austin reports this in the journal PLOS One.

Huh investigated how people in the US assessed their counterparts' receptivity in digital communication and the role emojis played in this process. For this purpose, 260 study participants were presented with 15 text message dialogues and asked to imagine them as conversations with their friends. Half of the participants were randomly assigned messages with emojis, the other half without. After reading the messages, the participants rated their perceived receptivity on a scale—as well as their perceived closeness, satisfaction with the relationship, and sympathy.

The results show: When emojis were used, study participants rated the sender's receptivity higher—which in turn led to greater perceived closeness and satisfaction with the relationship. When it came to sympathy, however, the effect was not significant. It also didn't matter whether emojis with faces—usually smileys—were used or other emoji symbols such as hearts, airplanes, confetti cannons, or similar.

Emojis add emotional depth to digital communication and expand interaction, the study states. Emojis also make messages more lively and can help prevent misunderstandings. Other studies have shown that emojis are, in a sense, a digital replacement for nonverbal expressions such as facial expressions or gestures, allowing them to better express emotions.

The author cites the limitations of the study as being that the participants did not receive messages from actual friends, and that each interaction was only assessed from one direction. The participants, who live in the US, were also recruited via an online platform that financially compensates people for completing certain tasks.

According to a study by researchers at Indiana University and the Kinsey Institute in the US, also published in PLOS One, people who use emojis more frequently are said to have greater emotional intelligence. Emojis are a way to convey content and communicate more effectively.

While classic emojis like laughing smileys have been part of everyday digital communication for years, new ones are constantly being added – and thus also reflect social developments. For example, the Unicode Consortium, which sets the international standard for character encoding, announced at the beginning of the year that it would introduce new emojis for beets, fingerprints, and a dead tree, among others. "Climate change, environmental collapse, and the prolonged drought year after year are becoming part of our everyday lives," wrote Brian Baihaki, who submitted this emoji, about his proposal. Anyone can submit emojis to Unicode. They simply need to provide a clear explanation of the added value of the submitted character.

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