A Subordinate's 'Smiling Emoji'... It May Not Reflect Their True Feelings

Research Findings: "Also Used When Hiding Negative Emotions"

A study has found that emojis, which are pictograms on mobile phones used to express human emotions, are utilized to conceal negative emotional expressions. They are used similarly to "display rules" in social life, which prevent showing displeasure.

Ryu Moyu, a doctoral researcher at the University of Tokyo in Japan, analyzed the relationship between Japanese people's emoji usage and emotional expression, and published the results in the scientific journal Frontiers in Psychology, according to a report by Yonhap News on the 6th.

Emoji is a term combining the Japanese words for picture ‘e (?)’ and character ‘moji (文字)’, originating from pictograms in Japanese mobile phone messages.

[Photo by Pixabay]

From 2008, companies like Google and Apple began promoting the Unicode standard, a "computational processing method to handle all characters worldwide." Since the release of Unicode 6.0 in 2010, emojis have been included, with new emojis added every year.

According to Frontiers, Ryu conducted a study involving 1,289 users of "Simeji," the most popular emoji keyboard in Japan.

He collected demographic data such as participants' gender and age, as well as emoji usage frequency through surveys, then presented messages in various contexts. Participants were asked to select emojis as usual and indicate the intensity of their emotional expressions.

Through this experiment, Ryu confirmed that participants used emojis more frequently to express positive emotions personally among close relationships, similar to facial display rules.

Conversely, emojis were used the least when communicating with superiors.

Users tended to choose euphemistic emojis to dilute emotional expressions and sent smiling emojis in negative contexts to manage emotional expression.

When there was no need to hide true emotions, participants strongly expressed emotions with context-appropriate emojis.

Negative emojis were found to be used only when negative emotions reached an extreme.

It is also known that in societies with strong individualistic tendencies, there is a greater acceptance of negative emotional expression.

Ryu stated, "As online social networks spread, people have become increasingly accustomed to managing and judging the appropriateness of emotions, distancing themselves from their true feelings. It is important to consider whether people are becoming more detached from their genuine emotions. Do people need a 'refuge' where they can properly express emotions, or is it possible to shed pretense and share their true selves in online environments?"

He added that since Simeji users are concentrated among young women, the sample might be biased toward women and Generation Z, so expanding the study population is necessary.

Ryu also noted that Japan’s unique culture, which emphasizes harmonious interpersonal relationships and conceals negative emotions, may have influenced the results.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.