skip to main content
research-article

An exploration of psychological factors on emoticon usage and implications for judgement accuracy

Published: 01 September 2016 Publication History

Abstract

Given the increasing use of online platforms, the current research comprised two studies examining links between personality and emoticon use: Study 1 explored the psychological factors associated with emoticon usage on different online platforms (Nź=ź92), and Study 2 assessed the accuracy of a group of observers' personality judgements of Facebook users (Nź=ź54). Participants in Study 1 comprised previously unacquainted dyads who each completed measures on their Big-5 personality, self-esteem, social anxiety, self-presentation, and self-reported usage of emoticons on email, text messages and Facebook. Participants provided Facebook data and interacted online with each other for 10-min. Trait analysis revealed that agreeableness was positively related to self-reported emoticon usage on Facebook, but not in texts or emails. In Study 2, observers viewed the Facebook stimuli and made personality assessments of the dyad members. Judgement accuracy was determined by correlating these assessments with targets' own self-reported personality. Analyses revealed the highest level of accuracy for extraversion and openness. Finally, positive correlations were found between objective usage of "happy" emoticons and observers' assessments of targets' agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness. Taken together, findings indicate the importance of specific online behaviours in self-presentation, and their impact on judgement accuracy. Psychological factors associated with online emoticon usage was examined.Agreeableness was positively related to self-reported usage on Facebook only.Conscientiousness was negatively related to "sad" emoticon usage.Extraversion and openness yielded the highest level of accuracy.Findings are discussed in relation to meta-traits and interpersonal perception.

References

[1]
L. Albright, D.A. Kenny, T.E. Malloy, Consensus in personality judgements at zero acquaintance, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 55 (1988) 387-395.
[2]
M. Alfi, P. Talbot, Health-related effects reported by electronic cigarette users in online forums, Journal of Medical Internet Research, 15 (2013) e59.
[3]
Y. Amichai-Hamburger, G. Vinitzky, Social network use and personality, Computers in Human Behavior, 26 (2010) 1289-1295.
[4]
A. Attrill, Sharing online parts of me: selective categorical self-disclosure across internet arenas, International Journal of Internet Science, 7 (2012) 55-77.
[5]
M.D. Back, S.C. Schmukle, B. Eglogff, How extraverted is [email protected]? Inferring personality from email addresses, Journal of Research in Personality, 42 (2008) 1116-1122.
[6]
M.D. Back, J.M. Stopfer, S. Vazire, S. Gaddis, S.C. Schmukle, B. Egloff, Facebook profiles reflect actual personality, not self-idealization, Psychological Science, 21 (2010) 372-374.
[7]
R.F. Baumeister, Self-esteem, SP and future interactions: a dilemma of reputation, Journal of Personality, 50 (1982) 29-45.
[8]
R.F. Baumeister, K.D. Vohs, D.C. Funder, Psychology as the science of self-reports and finger movements: whatever happened to actual behavior?, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2 (2007) 396-403.
[9]
D.S. Berry, J.S. Hansen, Personality, nonverbal behavior, and interaction quality in female dyads, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26 (2000) 278-292.
[10]
J.I. Biel, O. Aran, D. Gatica-Perez, You are known by how you vlog: personality impressions and nonverbal behavior in YouTube. In, ICWSM, 2011, July.
[11]
L. Bullingham, A.C. Vasconcelos, The presentation of self in the online world: Goffman and the study of online identities, Journal of Information Science, 39 (2013) 101-112.
[12]
P.J. Burke, Identities and social structure: the 2003 Cooley-Mead award address, Social Psychology Quarterly, 67 (2004) 5-15.
[13]
S.E. Caplan, Relations among loneliness, social anxiety, and problematic Internet use, CyberPsychology & Behavior, 10 (2007) 234-242.
[14]
D.R. Carney, C.R. Colvin, J.A. Hall, What, when, and for how long? A look at judgmental accuracy from thin slices of social behavior, 2004.
[15]
C.J. Carpenter, Narcissism on Facebook: self-promotional and anti-social behaviour, Personality and Individual Differences, 52 (2012) 482-486.
[16]
D.S. Chapman, P.M. Rowe, The impact of videoconference technology, interview structure, and interviewer gender on interviewer evaluations in the employment interview: a field experiment, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 74 (2001) 279-298.
[17]
C.R. Colvin, Childhood antecedents of young-adult judgability, Journal of Personality, 61 (1993) 611-635.
[18]
S. Coppersmith, The antecedents of self-esteem, Freeman, San Francisco, 1967.
[19]
D.E. Darbyshire, C. Kirk, H.J. Wall, L.K. Kaye, Don't judge a (Face)Book by its cover: exploring judgement accuracy of others' personality on Facebook, Computers in Human Behavior, 58 (2016) 380-387.
[20]
D.C. DeAndrea, J.B. Walther, Attributions for inconsistencies between online and offline self-presentations, Communication Research, 38 (2011) 805-825.
[21]
D. Derks, A.E.R. Bos, J. von Grumbkow, Emoticons in computer-mediated communication: social motives and social contexts, Cyberpsychology & Behaviour, 11 (2008) 99-101.
[22]
C.G. DeYoung, Higher order factors of the big five in a multi-informant sample, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91 (2006) 1138-1151.
[23]
J.M. Digman, Higher-order factors of the Big Five, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73 (1997) 1246.
[24]
S. Ebeling-Witte, M.L. Frank, D. Lester, Shyness, Internet use, and personality, CyberPsychology & Behavior, 10 (2007) 713-716.
[25]
A. Eftekhar, C. Fullwood, N. Morris, Capturing personality from Facebook photos and photo-related activities: how much exposure do you need?, Computers in Human Behavior, 37 (2014) 162-170.
[26]
P. Ekman, Telling lies, W. W. Norton, New York, 1985.
[27]
P. Ekman, An argument for basic emotions, Cognition & Emotion, 6 (1992) 169-200.
[28]
P. Ekman, W.V. Friesen, P. Ellsworth, Emotion in the human face: Guidelines for research and a review of findings, Permagon, New York, 1972.
[29]
J.S. Fleming, B.E. Courtney, The dimensionality of self-esteem: II. Hierarchical facet model for revised measurement scales, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46 (1984) 404.
[30]
C. Fullwood, The role of personality in online self-presentation, in: Cyberpsychology, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2015, pp. 9-28.
[31]
C. Fullwood, O.I. Martino, Emoticons and impression formation, Applied Semiotics, 19 (2007) 4-14.
[32]
D.C. Funder, On the accuracy of personality judgment: a realistic approach, Psychological Review, 102 (1995) 652.
[33]
D.C. Funder, Personality judgment: A realistic approach to person perception, Academic Press, London, 1999.
[34]
D.C. Funder, Accurate personality judgment, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 21 (2012) 177-182.
[35]
D.C. Funder, D.C. Kolar, M.C. Blackman, Agreement among observers of personality: interpersonal relations, similarity, and acquaintanceship, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69 (1995) 656.
[36]
H.J. Gacey, E.M. Richard, Influence of emoticons on perceived negative affect and professionalism in work-related email, Proceedings of the Academy of Management, 14646 (2013).
[37]
T. Ganster, S.C. Eimler, N.C. Kramer, Same same but different!? the differential influence of smilies and emoticons on person perception, Cyberpsychology, Behaviour, and Social Networking, 15 (2012) 226-230.
[38]
A.J. Gill, J. Oberlander, E. Austin, Rating email personality at zero acquaintance, Personality and Individual Differences, 40 (2006) 497-507.
[39]
E. Goffman, The presentation of self in everyday life, Penguin, London, 1990.
[40]
L.R. Goldberg, J.A. Johnson, H.W. Eber, R. Hogan, M.C. Ashton, C.R. Cloninger, The international personality item pool and the future of public-domain personality measures, Journal of Research in Personality, 40 (2006) 84-96.
[41]
S.D. Gosling, A.A. Augustine, S. Vazire, N. Holtzman, S. Gaddis, Manifestations of personality in online social networks: self-reported Facebook-related behaviors and observable profile information, Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 14 (2011) 483-488.
[42]
S.D. Gosling, S. Gaddis, S. Vazire, Personality impressions based on Facebook profiles, in: Paper presented at the international conference on weblogs and social Media. Boulder, Colorado, 2007, March.
[43]
W.J. Hagborg, The Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale and Harter's Self-Perception profile for adolescents: a concurrent validity study, Psychology in the Schools, 30 (1993) 132-136.
[44]
J.T. Hancock, P.J. Dunham, Impression formation in computer-mediated communication revisited an analysis of the breadth and intensity of impressions, Communication Research, 28 (2001) 325-347.
[45]
R.G. Heimberg, K.J. Horner, H.R. Juster, S.A. Safren, E.J. Brown, F.R. Schneier, Psychometric properties of the Liebowitz social anxiety scale, Psychological Medicine, 29 (1999) 199-212.
[46]
S.E. Holleran, M.R. Mehl, Let me read your mind: personality judgements based on a person's natural stream of thought, Journal of Research in Personality, 42 (2008) 747-754.
[47]
N. Jacobs, J. Van Os, C. Derom, E. Thiery, P. Delespaul, M. Wichers, Neuroticism explained? from a non-informative vulnerability marker to informative person-context interactions in the realm of daily life, British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 50 (2011) 19-32.
[48]
O.P. John, R.W. Robins, Accuracy and bias in self-perception: individual differences in self-enhancement and narcissism, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66 (1994) 206-219.
[49]
L.K. Kaye, H.J. Wall, S.A. Malone, "Turn that frown upside-down": a contextual account of emoticon usage on different virtual contexts, Computers in Human Behavior, 60 (2016) 463-467.
[50]
D. Keltner, Evidence for the distinctness of embarrassment, shame, and guilt: a study of recalled antecedents and facial expressions of emotion, Cognition & Emotion, 10 (1996) 155-172.
[51]
M. Kingsbury, R¿U Mad @ me: Social anxiety and interpretation bias in computer-mediated contexts, Carleton University, Ottawa Canada, 2014.
[52]
N.C. Krämer, S. Winter, Impression management 2.0: the relationship of self esteem, extraversion, self-efficacy, and self-presentation within social networking sites, Journal of Media Psychology, 20 (2008) 106-116.
[53]
J. Kruger, N. Epley, J. Parker, Z. Ng, Egocentrism over email: can we communicate as well as we think?, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89 (2005) 925-936.
[54]
M.R. Leary, Self-presentation: Impression management and interpersonal behavior, Brown & Benchmark Publishers, 1995.
[55]
M.R. Leary, A.B. Allen, Personality and persona: personality processes in self-presentation, Journal of Personality, 79 (2011) 889-916.
[56]
M.R. Leary, R.F. Baumeister, The nature and function of self-esteem: sociometer theory, in: Advances in experimental social psychology, Vol. 32, Academic Press, San Diego, 2000, pp. 1-62.
[57]
M.R. Leary, R.M. Kowalski, C.D. Campbell, Self-presentational concerns and social anxiety: the role of generalized impression expectancies, Journal of Research in Personality, 22 (1988) 308-321.
[58]
S. Lee, B.M. Quigley, M.S. Nesler, A.B. Corbett, J.T. Tedeschi, Development of a self-presentation tactics scale, Personality and Individual Differences, 26 (1999) 701-722.
[59]
R.D. Lennox, R.N. Wolfe, Revision of the self-monitoring scale, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46 (1984) 1349-1364.
[60]
T.D. Letzring, S.M. Wells, D.C. Funder, Information quantity and quality affect the realistic accuracy of personality judgment, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91 (2006) 111.
[61]
M.R. Liebowitz, Social phobia, Modern Problems in Pharmacopsychiatry, 22 (1987) 141-173.
[62]
B. Lim, R.E. Ployhart, Assessing the convergent and discriminant validity of Goldberg's International Personality Item Pool: a multitrait-multimethod examination, Organizational Research Methods, 9 (2006) 29-54.
[63]
F. Mairesse, M.A. Walker, M.R. Mehl, R.K. Moore, Using linguistic cues for the automatic recognition of personality in conversation and text, Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 30 (2007) 457-500.
[64]
T.C. Marriot, T. Buchanan, The true self online: personality correlates of preference for self-expression online, and observer ratings of personality online and offline, Computers in Human Behavior, 32 (2014) 171-177.
[65]
S. Mehdizadeh, Self-presentation 2.0: narcissism and self-esteem on Facebook, Cyberpsychology, Behaviour & Social Networking, 13 (2010) 357-364.
[66]
M.R. Mehl, S.D. Gosling, J.W. Pennebaker, Personality in its natural habitat: manifestations and implicit folk theories of personality in daily life, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90 (2006) 862-877.
[67]
T. Pierce, Social anxiety and technology face-to-face communication versus technological communication among teens, Computers in Human Behavior, 25 (2009) 1367-1372.
[68]
S.M. Rauch, C. Strobel, M. Bella, Z. Odachowski, C. Bloom, Face to face versus Facebook: does exposure to social networking web sites augment or attenuate physiological arousal among the socially anxious?, Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 17 (2014) 187-190.
[69]
R.E. Riggio, H.S. Friedman, Impression formation: the role of expressive behavior, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50 (1986) 421-427.
[70]
M. Rosenberg, Society and the adolescent self-image, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1965.
[71]
J. Rosenberg, N. Egbert, Traits and concerns for secondary goals as predictors of SPs tactics on Facebook, Journal of Computer-mediated Communication, 17 (2011) 1-18.
[72]
M.J. Rosenfield, Meeting online: the rise of the Internet as a social intermediary, in: Paper presented at the American sociological association annual meeting, 2010. www.allacademic.com/meta/p409508_index.html
[73]
M.E. Sadler, J.M. Hunger, C.J. Miller, Personality and impression management: Mapping the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire onto 12 self-presentation tactics, Personality and Individual differences, 48 (2010) 623-628.
[74]
K.R. Scherer, Personality inference from voice quality: the loud voice of extroversion, European Journal of Social Psychology, 8 (1978) 467-487.
[75]
K.R. Scherer, Vocal affect expression: a review and a model for future research, Psychological Bulletin, 99 (1986) 143.
[76]
B.R. Schlenker, Self-presentation, in: Handbook of self and identity, Guilford, New York, 2003, pp. 492-518.
[77]
B.R. Schlenker, M.R. Leary, Social anxiety and self-presentation: a conceptualization and model, Psychological Bulletin, 92 (1982) 641-669.
[78]
J.G. Shalon, H. Israelo, O. Markovitzky, J.D. Lipsitz, Social anxiety and physiological arousal during computer mediated versus face to face communication, Computers in Human Behavior, 44 (2015) 202-208.
[79]
P.E. Shrout, J.L. Fleiss, Intraclass correlations: uses in assessing rater reliability, Psychological Bulletin, 86 (1979) 420.
[80]
M. Snyder, Public appearances/private realities: The psychology of self-monitoring, Freeman, New York, 1987.
[81]
A. Socha, C.A. Cooper, D.M. McCord, Confirmatory factor analysis of the M5-50: an implementation of the International Personality Item Pool item set, Psychological Assessment, 22 (2010) 43.
[82]
J.M. Stopfer, B. Egloff, S. Nestler, M.D. Back, Personality expression and impression formation in online social networks: an integrative approach to understanding the processes of accuracy, impression management and meat-accuracy, European Journal of Personality, 28 (2014) 73-94.
[83]
I. Vandergriff, Emotive communication online: a contextual analysis of computer-mediated communication (CMC) cues, Journal of Pragmatics, 51 (2013) 1-12.
[84]
S. Vazire, S.D. Gosling, E-Perceptions: personality impressions based on personal websites, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87 (2004) 123-132.
[85]
H.J. Wall, P.J. Taylor, C. Campbell, Getting the balance right? A mismatch in interaction demands between target and judge impacts on judgement accuracy for some traits but not others, Personality and Individual Differences, 88 (2016) 66-72.
[86]
H.J. Wall, P.J. Taylor, J. Dixon, S.M. Conchie, D.A. Ellis, Rich contexts do not always enrich the accuracy of personality judgments, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49 (2013) 1190-1195.
[87]
J.B. Walther, B. Van Der Heide, S.Y. Kim, D. Westerman, S.T. Tong, The role of friends' appearance and behavior on evaluations of individuals on Facebook: are we known by the company we keep?, Human Communication Research, 34 (2008) 28-49.

Cited By

View all
  1. An exploration of psychological factors on emoticon usage and implications for judgement accuracy

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image Computers in Human Behavior
    Computers in Human Behavior  Volume 62, Issue C
    September 2016
    762 pages

    Publisher

    Elsevier Science Publishers B. V.

    Netherlands

    Publication History

    Published: 01 September 2016

    Author Tags

    1. Emoticons
    2. First impressions
    3. Online
    4. Personality
    5. Self-presentation

    Qualifiers

    • Research-article

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)0
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0
    Reflects downloads up to 05 Feb 2025

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all

    View Options

    View options

    Figures

    Tables

    Media

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media