Emojis that work! Incorporating visual cues from facial expressions in emojis can reduce ambiguous interpretations

Abstract

Emojis are included in more than half of all text-based messages shared on digital platforms. Evidence is emerging to suggest that many emojis are ambiguous, which can lead to miscommunication and put a strain on social relations. We hypothesized that emojis that incorporate visual cues that distinguish facial expressions of emotions, known as facial action units (AUs), might offer a solution to this problem. We compared interpretation of novel emojis that incorporate AUs with interpretations of existing emojis and face photographs. Stimuli conveyed either sadness, happiness, anger, surprise, fear, or neutrality (i.e., no emotion). Participants (N = 237) labelled the emotion(s) conveyed by these stimuli using open-ended questions. They also rated the extent to which each stimulus conveyed the target emotions using rating scales. Seven out of ten emojis with action units were interpreted more accurately or as accurately when compared to existing emojis and face photographs. A critical difference between these novel emojis and existing emojis is that the emojis with action units were never seen before by the participants - their meaning was entirely derived from the presence of AUs. We conclude that depicting visual cues from real-world facial expressions in emojis has the potential to facilitate emotion communication in text-based digital interactions.

Keywords

• Emojis
• Emotion communication
• Facial action units
• Social interactions
• Digital technology