The Affective, Semantic, And Interpersonal Effects Of Emojis With Different Emotional Valences

Emojis were originally applied as a way for people to express emotions in computer media communication.At now,it is considered as a non-verbal clue in a face-to-face context.Social presence theory,media richness theory and social information processing theory,starting from different angles,point out that emojis have emotional,semantic and interpersonal functions.Yet it is still being discussed about weather emojis can promote people’s emotional expression,strengthen people’s emotional expression and improve the efficiency of interpersonal communication.With the two contexts of single-line text and real scene,this study controls the independent variables such as sentence or scene emotional valence,sentence or scene type and self-relevance.The function of emojis in social interaction is discussed by the difference between people’s scoring indicators and time indicators.The experiment 1 includes two experiments.The experiment 1a investigates that weather the single-line text can reflect the corresponding emotion,semantic and interpersonal functions when they are used as a supplement in a sentence.The experiment participants are undergraduates.The experiment design adopts the form of2(sentence emotional valence:positive and negative)× 2(sentence type:text sentence and emoji sentence)× 2(self-relevance:personal and society).The dependent variable indicators are valence degree,arousal degree,degree of understanding,communication efficiency and reaction time.The result shows that:(1)Valence degree.The main effect of sentence emotional valence is significant.The remarks given negative emotional sentences is sharply lower than that of positive emotional sentences.The main effect marginal of sentence type is significant.People’s review with lower scores for text sentences than emoji sentences.(2)Arousal degree.The main effect of self-relevance is significant.People’s arousal scores for social emotional sentences are greatly lower than that of personal emotional sentences.The main effect of sentence emotional valence is significant,and people’s arousal score for negative emotional sentences is strongly lower than that of positive emotional sentences.There is a clear interaction between sentence emotional valence and sentence type,and people’s arousal scores for positive text sentences are lower than positive emoji sentences to a great extend.(3)Degree of understanding.The main effect of self-correlation is significant,and people’s understanding of social emotional sentences is clearly lower than personal emotional sentences.The main effect of sentence emotional valence is significant,and people’s understanding of negative emotional sentences is evidently lower than that of positive emotional sentences.(4)Communication efficiency.The main effect of self-relevance is significant,and people’s communication efficiency scores for social emotional sentences are fundamentally lower than personal emotional sentences.The main effect of sentence emotional valence is significant,and people’s communication efficiency score for negative emotional sentences is much lower than that of positive emotional sentences.The main effect of sentence type is significant,and people’s communication efficiency scores for text sentences are remarkably lower than emoji sentences.(5)Reaction time.The main effect of self-relevance is significant.The time of people reading personal emotional sentences is distinctively shorter than social emotional sentences.Experiment 1b aims to explore whether emojis in a single-line text can show corresponding functions when they are placed at the end of the sentence replacement text.The experiment design is consistent with experiment 1a.The result shows:(1)Valence degree.The main effect of sentence emotional valence is significant,and people’s pleasure score for negative emotional sentences is much lower than that of positive emotional sentences.The main effect of sentence type is significant,and people’s pleasure scores for text sentences are significantly lower than emoji sentences.There is a obvious interaction between sentence emotional valence and sentence type,and people’s pleasure scores for positive text sentences are largely lower than positive emoji sentences.(2)Arousal degree.The main effect of self-relevance is significant,and people’s arousal scores for social emotional sentences are significantly lower than personal emotional sentences.The main effect of sentence emotional valence is significant,and people’s arousal score for negative emotional sentences is quite lower than that of positive emotional sentences.The main effect of sentence type is significant,and people’s arousal scores for text sentences are comparably lower than emoji sentences.There is a significant interaction between sentence emotional valence and sentence type,and people’s arousal scores for positive text sentences are significantly lower than positive emoji sentences.(3)Degree of understanding.The main effect of self-correlation is significant,and people’s understanding of social emotional sentences is clearly lower than personal emotional sentences.The main effect of sentence emotional valence is significant,and people’s understanding of negative emotional sentences is massively lower than that of positive emotional sentences.The main effect marginal of sentence type is obvious,and people’s understanding of text sentences is lower than emoji sentences.(4)Communication efficiency.The main effect of self-relevance is significant,and people’s communication efficiency scores for social emotional sentences are largely lower than personal emotional sentences.The main effect of sentence emotional valence is significant,and people’s communication efficiency score for negative emotional sentences is greatly lower than that of positive emotional sentences.(5)Reaction time.The main effect of self-correlation is significant.People read personal emotional sentences significantly shorter than social emotional sentences.The interaction between self-relevance,sentence emotional valence and sentence type is remarkable.People read personal negative emoji sentences shorter than personal negative text sentences.Experiment 2,undergraduates are adopted as the subjects,and their gaze characteristics are recorded with an eye tracking recorder.The design takes the form of 2(scenario emotional valence: positive and negative)× 3(scene type: text scene,word expression scene,non-word expression scene)× 2(self-relevance: personal,social).The result show:(1)Valence degree.The main effect of self-relevance is significant,and people’s ratings of pleasure in personal chat scenes are significantly lower than those in social chat scenes.The main effect of the emotional valence of the scene is significant.People’s ratings of the pleasure of the negative chat scene are much lower than that of the active chat scene.(2)Arousal degree.The main effect of self-correlation is significant,and people’s arousal score for social chat scenes is greatly lower than that of personal chat scenes.The main effect of scene emotional valence is significant,and people’s arousal score for negative chat scenes is remarkably lower than that of active chat scenes.The interaction between the emotional valence of the scene and the scene type is significant,and people’s arousal score for the positive wordless emoji chat scene is substantially lower than that of the positive wordless emoji chat scene.(3)Degree of understanding.The main effect of self-correlation is significant,and people’s understanding of social chat scenes is greatly lower than that of personal chat scenes.The main effect of scene emotional valence is significant,and people’s understanding of negative chat scenes is much lower than that of active chat scenes.(4)Communication efficiency.The main effect of self-relevance is significant,and people’s communication efficiency scores for social chat scenes are significantly lower than those for personal chat scenes.The main effect of scene emotional valence is significant,and people’s communication efficiency scores for negative chat scenes are much lower than those for active chat scenes.(5)Indicators such as the total number of fixations,the first-pass fixation count,the total fixation time,and the first-pass reading time in the text area all detected that the main effect of self-relevance is significant,and people’s fixation count and fixation time for personal chat scenes are significantly low In the social chat scene.In addition,the first-pass reading time indicator also tells that the main effect of the scene type is significant.People’s first-pass reading time for text chat scenes is largely lower than that of wordless emoji chat scenes,and people’s first-pass reading time for text chat scenes is massively below the chat scene with word emoji.(6)The total number of fixations in the emoji area.The main effect of the scene type is significant.The total number of people looking at the text chat scene is greatly lower than that of the wordless emoji chat scene.The total number of people looking at the wordless emoji chat scene is largely lower than that of the word emoji chat scene.(7)The first-pass reading time of the emoji area.The main effect of the scene type is significant.People’s first-pass reading time of the wordless emoji chat scene is largely shorter than that of the text chat scene,and people’s first-pass reading time of the word emoji chat scene is greatly shorter than that of the text chat scene.(8)The first-pass fixation count in the emoji area.The interaction between the emotional valence of the scene and the type of the scene is salient,and the number of people’s first-pass fixation count on the negative wordless emoji chat scene is significantly lower than that of the negative text chat scene.The conclusions arrived under the conditions of this research is: in single-line text,positive emojis have emotional functions,help to enhance people’s emotional pleasure and arousal expression and support social presence theory and social information processing theory.Negative emojis promotes people’s reading.People will spend massively less time reading personal negative emoji sentences than reading personal negative text sentences.In real scenes,positive emojis have emotional functions,and the combination of positive text and positive emojis can induce people’s emotional arousal expression more than positive emojis.