ArticlePloS one2020
Emoji can facilitate recognition of conveyed indirect meaning.
Article in PloS one, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- The Impact of Secure Attachment on Internet Altruistic Behavior: From the Helper and Seeker's Perspective.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- An emoji centric approach to sarcasm detection in online discourse.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Context Matters: How Decontextualization Influences Public Perception and Conservation Attitudes Toward Barbary Macaques in Algeria.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Emoji-Dis: A dataset of emojis characterised in 13 discrete emotions.Scientific data · 2025Article
- Messenger-based assessment of empathic accuracy in couples' smartphone communication.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- Communication in Clinical and Educational Spaces: Challenges and Opportunities.Journal of general internal medicine · 2025Article
- Emotional text messages affect the early processing of emoticons depending on their emotional congruence: evidence from the N170 and EPN event related potentials.Cognitive processing · 2024Article
- Semantic and syntactic processing of emojis in sentential intermediate positions.Cognitive neurodynamics · 2024Article
- Emoji use in social media posts: relationships with personality traits and word usage.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Emotion recognition of faces and emoji in individuals with moderate-severe traumatic brain injury.Brain injury · 2023Article
- Emoji-SP, the Spanish emoji database: Visual complexity, familiarity, frequency of use, clarity, and emotional valence and arousal norms for 1031 emojis.Behavior research methods · 2023Article
- A study of dynamic emoji emotional responses based on rhythms and motion effects.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Enhancing EFL Learners' Self-Efficacy Beliefs of Learning English with Emoji Feedbacks in CALL: Why and How.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- The Multidimensional Lexicon of Emojis: A New Tool to Assess the Emotional Content of Emojis.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Article
- What Did They Mean by That? Young Adults' Interpretations of 105 Common Emojis.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In face-to-face communication there are multiple paralinguistic and gestural features that facilitate recognition of a speaker's intended meaning, features that are lacking when people communicate digitally (e.g., texting). As a result, substitutes have emerged (expressive punctuation, capitalization, etc.) to facilitate communication in these situations. However, little is known about the comprehension processes involved in digital communication. In this research we examined the role of emoji in the comprehension of face-threatening, indirect replies. Participants in two experiments read question-reply sequences and then judged the accuracy of interpretations of the replies. On critical trials the reply violated the relation maxim and conveyed a negative, face-threatening response. On one-third of the trials the reply contained only text, on one-third of the trials the reply contained text and an emoji, and on one-third of the trials the reply contained only an emoji. When the question requested potentially negative information about one of the interactants (disclosures and opinions), participants were more likely to endorse the indirect meaning of the reply, and did so faster, when the reply contained an emoji than when it did not. This effect did not occur when the question was a request for action, a more conventional type of indirect reply. Overall, then, this research demonstrates that emoji can sometimes facilitate the comprehension of meaning. Future research is needed to examine the boundary conditions for this effect.
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