Emojis: The Feelings Behind Every Online Message

Can you imagine a text without any formal, informal, or colorful symbol at the end? It is just hard to even think about such texts as those colorful symbols are entrenched widely in the current digital world. In addition to this, those tiny smiling faces are changing the way we communicate.

These small smiling faces or expressions are defined as emojis that revolve around us daily by adding virtual expression to real conversations.

Let us take a look at the history of these emojis from how they originated, to the present evolution of them along with the future predictions.

Back in time, the emojis were designed as a symbolic representation of human emotions. Emojis are used to express irony or humor, emotion, tone of voice in text-based communication, and for substituting body language.

As per Albert Mehrabian – a well-renowned psychologist; only 8% of the information reflects the actual meaning of what we say through messages in his 7%-38%-55%rule. The rest comes from the way it is received through intonation, speech rhythm, accent, gestures, and much more.

Emoticons: Is that a new chatting language?

Emoticons – a typographical sibling of emojis trigger emotional responses among the people and induce empathy. Many studies prove that positive emojis or emoticons in messages create positive feelings in the reader and vice versa.

It is also believed that emojis can soften negative messages like complaints, requests, and rejections in business communication.

So, does this mean we are becoming addicted to emojis considering it as a new form of language? Well, language comes in many forms and one of them can be the use of visual symbols. 

Today, the writing systems are evolving from traditional simple texts to resembling emojis. Emojis are substituting words and even whole phrases these days.

A research carried out by Aposta digital in 2015 found that online communications are becoming increasingly shorter due to the emojis. Also, internet slang is one of the results for shorter communication too.

Abbreviations

The most common abbreviations like LOL are not often used as compared to the past as the very popular thumbs-up emoji on Whatsapp. It serves multiple purposes, be it signifying acceptance or liking, showing informality, etc.

It is well researched that emojis help to deepen our emotional self-awareness and makes us more conscious about our feelings. 

Therefore, it is a proven fact that emojis make our communication much enjoyable and interesting. According to the SwiftKey report of 2015, happy emojis like kisses, grins, winks, hearts, thumbs up, cross fingers, and smiles are used most of the time whereas sad and angry faces are applied in rare cases.

Heart emoji ranks as the third most frequently used and the users even prefer anthropomorphic symbols – faces for communication. Using frequent emojis does not necessarily mean that we are happy or in love.

But the fact that people like to post more positive information with the help of smileys on social media about themselves. On the other side, emojis help in hiding the actual emotion and mislead a person in many ways.

We’re aware of the gimmick of posting happy pictures on social media often now and then with cute emojis but it necessarily does not make a person happier or in love. Along with this, there is a strong link between social power and emojis which is very well taken advantage of by influencers on social media.

Importance of emojis in our day to day life

Emojis are sometimes gender-based and it is proven that women use more emoticons than men. Females are bound to use more graphic enriched symbols to express humor while males use to describe sarcasm or teasing.

To your surprise, it is also said that emojis help to predict the person’s profession. For instance- office clerks use more negative emojis and emoticons as compared to IT specialists or marketers and startup people. 

All of the above research proves how emojis are widely used across social platforms and the way we are addicted to them. But according to the study carried out by Bangor University, out of hundreds of emojis; they are classified into 27 distinct categories.

All of the other smileys, emoticons, or emojis revolve around these 27 categories and just the shape, texture, and color varies from each other.

Hence, we can understand how the world of emojis is interconnected with each other through variant emotions and how they help us to communicate effectively. Let us take a look at a few scientific reasons for the importance of emojis in our day to day life.

Better and Effective Communication

Humans are known as social animals. Thereby, if we stop interacting or involving ourselves with the people around us then there are higher chances of developing psychological conditions like loneliness, depression, anxiety and stress. We often form our own identity from the types of feedback we receive from family, friends, and colleagues.

For being a social animal, we need constant and regular confirmations for our social placement. When we are communicating face to face, we make use of non-verbal tools such as gestures, facial expressions, body language, and intonation. But what should we do when it comes to having a virtual conversation?

Well, in that case, emojis can come to a great rescue on all the virtual platforms as they reduce ambiguity and intensity or tone down our emotional gestures.

We continuously urge to express our emotions in virtual communication and emojis, thus coming to the rescue by fulfilling this need.

Interesting Read: How To Use Facebook’s New Reactions Emoji?

Speeds up Social Intimacy

Social intimacy is required to have good and healthy communication. We often undertake this by increasing the amount of communication and through the disclosure of personal details.

Also, social intimacy is widely spread across computer-oriented modes of communication and emojis can help maintain it flawlessly.

To establish an emotional connection with people, we need to share our emotions and feelings with that specific person which further forms an essential element of how we build and maintain relationships with them. Emojis help in increasing social intimacy more sincerely and freely.

Overall, it is just not about the emojis but also our feelings that matter the most. We can get tremendous benefits from emojis as they help with the majority of social well-being, emotional wellness, and physical health as similar to face-to-face conversations.

Replica of Human Faces

One of the main reasons why we are so much addicted to emojis is because we always react with them like we would with the actual person. This takes our conversation to the next level by making us feel as if we are talking to a person in-real thereby making the chat enjoyable. 

Flexible as per Businesses

It is unfair to say that emojis are not so professional for communicating at the workplace. But nowadays, more and more smileys are entering into business emails through different forms, be it formal mail or in marketing.

Making use of the smiley faces in a mail can make an employee feel much more valued while maintaining the credibility of the sender. In addition to this, it helps to create a positive environment and a happier workplace.

In rare cases, emojis are essential to communicate emotions as only words cannot portray their real hidden emotion behind it.

However, they do not hold any true value in the academic word or voice notes. Yet, emojis are a fun and light-hearted way to convert a wide range of emotions which sometimes words fail to deliver. 

When it comes to communication, interpretation plays a crucial role and emojis have a unique ability to portray your text or email in easier ways.

Take an instance, when you respond with ‘OK’ or ‘K’; it depicts how impatient and frustrated you are feeling at the moment. Instead, imagine if you respond with ‘ OK 😊’ it can create a lot more impact by displaying a true understanding.

Interesting Read: How to Use Emojis in Facebook Ads? [Complete Guide]

Top Emojis to Add Emotions

Here are a few emojis you can add to a text message or email to add emotion and save ourselves from any misinterpretation.

😄 – Smiling Face with Squinting Eyes

It is one of the widely used emojis for expressing genuine happiness and warm feelings in informal text messages. If you are sending a mail to your manager that involves a lot of mundane information or request; try to add this emoji and feel the light-heartedness in the mail.

😍 – Smiling Face with Heart-Shaped Eyes

This emoji portraits an enthusiastic feeling of love, adoration, and infatuation. For instance- are you satisfied with receiving that cute gift from your dear ones? Then it is the perfect time to use this emoji and show your love and appreciation.

😌 – Relieved Face

These emojis portray pleasant feelings including calm, peace, contentment, and relief. It likewise assists with pleasant sensations of happiness alongside great humor. This emoticon ought to be utilized when something terrible or negative was possibly streamlined.

🤧 – Sneezing Face

This emoji portrays sneezing or blowing of the nose into a white tissue, as if from a cold or allergies. Are you feeling unwell and sending an email or Skype text to your manager? Sneak in an emoji and let your boss know exactly how you are feeling. This might help you get a half-day leave from your work to relax. 

😵 – Dizzy Face

This emoticon passes on an increased or exaggerated feeling of such sentiments, for example, surprise, shock, doubt, and curiosity as though lurched to the point of confusion.

Did somebody simply get terminated? Did a meeting not go as arranged? This is the ideal chance to show your disarray or shock the other person when you do not get things effectively.

🥺 – Pleading Face

This emoji deals with the feeling of pleading or begging someone. For instance, if you have a client who has not followed your request? Send them an email with this emoji and let them know how urgent or important it is for you.

🤞 – Fingers Crossed

This emoticon is normally utilized as a motion demonstrating luck or to show the craving for a great result. It is utilized regularly in statements while examining something proficient with a customer or a colleague.

👌 – OK Hand Sign

This emoji represents ‘I’m okay’ or ‘yes, that’s good/correct’ is an ideal emoticon when a customer, colleague, or worker has sent something which needs you to sign off or agree upon. It shows that you’re agreeing to every single point of them without raising any questions.

👏 – Clapping Hands

This emoji can be used as a round of applause. It is one of the best emoji to use after hearing any kind of good news from a client, employee, or business partner and make them feel appreciated for their achievement.

😙 – Pouting Face

This emoji depicts more intense degrees of anger like hate or rage. Hopefully, you never really need to use this emoji toward a client, business partner, or employee as it may distress your relationship from good to worst.

In one of the studies carried out by Instagram, they figured out the top most used emoji for posts, texts, or live sessions. Without any doubt, the hearts and hand gestures topped them all. Here, we can see how vast emojis attract us by replicating human expressions most pleasantly. 

Are we going to be over Obsessed with Emoticons in the future?

Emoticons or emojis are a real addiction for many users on Facebook or WhatsApp. If you send an emoji to another person, it acts as instant gratification for validating your sentence. If we look at the near future, emojis are not leaving the digital world and it can upgrade and transform to the next level for better communication.

It might be at risk that using emojis for the communication of extremely sensitive topics can narrow down or perhaps vanish the subjects’ vulnerability.

Hence, next time when you think of sending any formal mail or have a hearty conversation with your loved one; do not forget the above-mentioned points for maintaining a healthy conversation. If you are curious about more such information then do not forget to subscribe to our blogs.