The Use Of Emoticons And Its Influence On Interpersonal Perception And Willingness To Communicate

With the rapid development of the Internet,computer-mediated communication(CMC)has popularized worldwide as a common social manner.The parlances and symbols of networks have appeared correspondingly,arousing the attention of relevant scholars.Emoticons with facial features,is one of the most important nonverbal cues used for communication in cyberspace.In the online communication,emoticons might serve as nonverbal surrogates suggestive of facial expression.It's therefore called "second faces" of people in the network communication.But the current research on the use of emoticons is relatively lacking,and the influence of emoticons on interpersonal perceptions and its underlying mechanism are relatively less.This study was conducted in the perspective of Stereotype Content Model(SCM)and baby schema,based on the status quo of College Students' network communication in our country,combined with interview method and questionnaire survey,this study investigated the general situation of the usage of emoticons,as well as the underlying motivation for those usages.The research emphatically discussed the influence of emoticons on interpersonal perception and the mechanism of behavior experiments,and the willingness to communicate of perceivers.1.The base condition for the usage of emoticons and the formation of the motivation questionnaire of usage of emoticons.(1)With 642 college students were investigated,the results of the basic usage of emoticons showed that the mask emoticons were used most frequently than any other emoticons.Emoticons were used most frequently in social situation when people are chatting with friends on public topics.They play an important role in expressing emotions and interpreting meanings.(2)Based on the previous research,combined with the results of the usage of emoticons and interviews,the initial questionnaire items of the motivation of using emoticons was developed.The preliminary survey and final survey was conducted among 306 and 363 undergraduate students respectively.Exploratory factor analysis,reliability analysis and validity analysis were conducted on these data.The results showed that the final version of the motivation of using emoticons included 11 questions in two dimensions:"affection-intention expression" and "interaction control".This questionnaire had good reliability and structure validity,and could be used as an effective measurement tool for measuring individual motivation of using emoticons.2.The usage of emoticons and its influence on interpersonal perception:The mediated moderating model.(1)Whether to use emoticons had a significant influence on interpersonal perception.In online communication,compared with those who had not used emoticons,the senders who used emoticons significantly improved their warmth and reduced their corypetence to the perceivers.(2)The baby schema played a completely mediating role in the relation between using emoticons and the perception of warmth and competence.The senders' using of emoticons positively affected their perception of wannth and negatively affected the perception of competence to the perceivers,through the intermediary role of baby schema.(3)Social context played a moderating role in the relation between using emoticon and warmth and competence of perceived perception.Specifically,in the social-oriented context,using emoticons had little effect on one's warmth and competence to the perceivers.Howerver,in the task-oriented context,using emoticons enhanced the perception of one's warmth and weaked the perception of one's competence siginificantly.(4)Based on the SCM,the mediated moderating model revealed that,the increasing amount of using emoticons directly predicted the increase in perception of warmth and decrease in perception of competence in the perspective of perceivers.Significant boundary effect,which resulted from the impact of conditions,showed on the perception of competence,but not on the perception of warmth.The factor of social context moderated using emoticons influence on the perception of warmth and competence.The regulation of social context was completely effected through the intermediary variable of baby schema.3.The regulation of the factor of context affects the relationship between using emoticons and willingness to communicate.The intention to communicate with the users who use or not use emoticons is regulated by the factor of social context.Compared with communicating with users who did not use emoticons,the intention to communicate with the ones who used emoticons was significantly higher in both social-oriented context and task-oriented context.Moreover,in task-oriented context using emoticons had greater influence on the intention of communicating than in social-oriented context.Based on the SCM and related studies,this study discussed the influence of using emoticons on interpersonal perception and willingness to communicate from the perspective of the microprocess of online communication.The results of this study not only help us to understand people's experience of perception in transmitting information and interacting with each other in online communication,but also provide suggestions on the methods and skills for network communicating.This study also further enriches the emerging theory of the SCM,by further expanding the application of the SCM to the network communication,and providing an empirical basis for its improvement and development.