Tell me what emoji you use and I will tell you how you are

Tell me what emoji you use and I will tell you how you are

The famous faces on smartphones are ten years old and have become a new language

A flamenca, a smiling face or an eggplant. Who has not added these little drawings to a message? Or, perhaps, you have sent that 12x12 pixel drawing full of meaning. Emoticons are already part of the language in social networks and every day on July 17, their day is celebrated worldwide.

Part of the fault is a Spanish woman, Ángela Guzmán. This designer worked closely with Raymond Sepúlveda in the design of Apple emoticons, which precisely this year marks the tenth anniversary of the first emoji package of the Cupertino giant.

The most used are those that show moods, in the case of Spain, the most used is the kiss in the form of a heart that is usually used to say goodbye or congratulate someone else.

However, although there is not much research in this regard, the first reports regarding the use of emojis have already appeared.

The British University of Edge Hill highlights that kindness was positively related to the use of emoticons on Facebook, but not in text messages or emails. In the social network 700 million emojis are used per day and the one that has grown the most is the heart, according to the platform itself.

The British researchers invited several participants to chat with each other for 10 minutes without knowing each other, as well as responding to a questionnaire in which they had to self-assess psychologically. A study to explore the psychological factors associated with the use of emoticons in different online platforms.

Then they opened another investigation to make assessments about their personality and compare if it matched the description they had made of themselves. In conclusion, the research revealed that those who used positive emoticons or who expressed happiness were more open or extroverted.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the University of Rochester has also devoted its efforts to understanding the use of emoji and its conclusion is explicit: "the most introverted people are the ones who use the most emoticons".

The use of emoji, according to studies, says a lot about the personality of the interlocutor. If the preferred image is smiling faces, the user is seen as "a person" innately happy and open to new experiences ". Experts explain that the issuer tries to "make the message understand well and not be ambiguous."

The opposite case is in the sad faces, but "it does not mean that you are", indicate the studies of the language of the emojis. What it indicates is that the user is afraid to show their feelings.

However, the use of these emoticons, as happens with the other languages, varies from one place to another of the globe. This is the conclusion of the British researchers after having analyzed more than 4.5 million geolocated tweets in Spain, the United States, the United Kingdom or Italy that contained at least one emoji.

Interpretations of 25% of the emoticons are in the opposite direction to that intended by the issuer, according to the study.