A study conducted by the University of Tokyo (Japan) has shown that people use ’emojis’ to hide, as well as show, their feelings.
In his work, published in the revista científica ‘Frontiers in Psychology’the scientists asked 1,289 people who use ’emojis’ to respond to Internet chat messages and report their feelings and the use of ’emojis’.
Positive emojis to hide negative feelings
They found that more emojis were used among close friends, that the use of positive emojis to express positive feelings was correlated with personal welfare and that positive ’emojis’ could be used to mask the expression of negative sentiments.
This choice to hide a negative emotion is a display rule, one of many that define socially appropriate responses to emotions. Although these norms can promote interpersonal harmony, they can also have negative consequences for the person who decides to change their way of expressing emotions.
As social interaction on the Internet increases, scientists are investigating how ’emojis’ are used to reflect our emotions in different contexts.
“As online socializing becomes more prevalent, people have gotten used to embellishing their expressions and to examine the adequacy of your communication. However, I realized that this can lead us to lose touch with our authentic emotions,” said study leader Moyu Liu of the University of Tokyo.
Study in Japan
Liu recruited 1,289 participants, all users of Japan’s most downloaded emoji keyboard, Simeji, to investigate how emojis were used to express or mask emotions.
Previous research had established that people use ’emojis’ as functional equivalents of facial expressions, but not the relationships between expressed and experienced emotions.
If the dissonance between the emotions that are experienced and those that can be expressed is too great, emotional exhaustion can result, although members of different cultures experience it differently.
Display standards affect the most negative emotions, that are often considered less appropriate to express. It is also often more acceptable to express emotions to someone close to you, and it may be more acceptable for a particular gender to express certain emotions. It may also be considered more acceptable to express negative emotions in more individualistic societies.
Participants in Liu’s study provided demographic data, answered questions about their subjective well-being, and rated how often they used emojis. They were sent messages with different social contexts, responded to them as they normally would, and rated the intensity of the expression of their emotions.