{"id":384016,"date":"2026-04-09T22:56:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T22:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/384016\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T22:56:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T22:56:11","slug":"using-emojis-at-work-youre-not-going-to-like-this-study-%f0%9f%98%ae","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/384016\/","title":{"rendered":"Using Emojis at Work? You’re Not Going to Like This Study \ud83d\ude2e"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, crying-laughing emoji, you\u2019re not going to believe this\u2014but, spiral-eyes emoji, a psychological experiment has found that incorporating emojis into your workplace communiqu\u00e9s might be leading your peers to perceive you as incompetent. But not always: the mercurial purple devil emoji, as always, is in the details.<\/p>\n

Researchers at the University of Ottawa tested the reactions of 243 adult volunteers (134 men and 109 women) to a battery of hypothetical corporate instant messages, some with emojis, some without, to gauge the average response to the inclusion of these pictographic symbols. While messages without emoji were, far and away, deemed to be the most professional, emojis with a clear positive vibe paired with a positive or neutral text message also tended to enhance the test subject\u2019s assessment of the sender\u2019s competence.<\/p>\n

There were gender dynamics at play, too. Women were more likely to judge negative IMs with emoji more harshly if they were ostensibly sent by women, compared to similar negative messages and emojis sent by men. But this trend was also seen in workplace IMs sent without emojis.<\/p>\n

\u201cEmojis are not simply neutral add-ons to text messages; they can influence how others perceive us, particularly in terms of competence and appropriateness,\u201d the study\u2019s lead author, Erin L. Courtice at the University of Ottawa\u2019s School of Psychology, said in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy understanding the nuances of emoji use,\u201d Courtice opined, \u201cprofessionals can leverage these digital tools to enhance their communication and build stronger workplace relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n

Repressed emojis <\/p>\n

Courtice and her colleagues exercised strict controls on their study to ensure that they were uncovering real and broadly generalizable psychological phenomena. Their emoji selection (unlike many you\u2019ve probably witnessed in the workplace) was limited to only three options: a positive \u201cgrinning face\u201d emoji, a negative \u201cangry face\u201d emoji, or no emoji at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe deliberately selected these emojis to represent positive and negative emotional valence because these simple and unambiguous facial expressions minimize interpretive variability, representing clear positive and negative emotions,\u201d the team wrote<\/a> in their study, published in the journal Collabra: Psychology.<\/p>\n

Highly subjective and potentially inflammatory emoji\u2014including the tumescent eggplant (or aubergine) emoji, the water (or unspecified fluid) droplets emoji, the lip-biting emoji, and the succulent ripe peach emoji\u2014were excluded from the team\u2019s experimental framework.<\/p>\n

So were all off-brand Google Android and Microsoft Teams emojis. \u201cAll emojis were from iOS,\u201d the team stated.<\/p>\n

Courtice and her fellow psychologists crafted a matrix of workplace IMs that varied between positive, negative, and neutral sentence content; positive and negative emojis, or no emoji content; and sender gender. Their study participants were asked to rate these messages both in terms of the hypothetical sender\u2019s \u201ccompetence\u201d and \u201cappropriateness,\u201d which provided some additional nuance.<\/p>\n

Far and away, the presence of a negative emoji led subjects to deem a workplace message as inappropriate and, worse, led respondents to perceive the sender as less competent, particularly when the emotion was misaligned with positive or neutral message content. Positive emojis, the study noted, \u201cdo not soften bad news or critical feedback,\u201d instead heightening suspicions of the sender\u2019s \u201cdishonesty and insincerity.\u201d So, don\u2019t do this if you can help it.<\/p>\n

Emoji-nal rescue <\/p>\n

Courtice had a silver lining for those of us who innately love adding a chipper emoji to keep up morale: Positive emojis can \u201cenhance perceptions of competence when used with neutral or congruent messages,\u201d her study found.<\/p>\n

\u201cFuture research should consider how emojis function within broader communication patterns,\u201d Courtince said, \u201cexamining outcomes such as conversation flow, rapport building, conflict resolution, and team cohesion in digital workplace environments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much was left on the table, her team noted, suggesting further examination of \u201ca wider range of emojis and their use in more naturalistic settings.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough our use of validated stimuli is a strength of our design,\u201d they wrote, \u201cwe acknowledge that workplace communication involves a broader range of emojis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sophisticated juxtaposition of the clown face emoji, the nail-painting emoji, and\/or the casket emoji while conveying office gossip might, in fact, rocket your own coworker\u2019s perception of your competence into the stratosphere. Diamond emoji? Flying cash emoji? You might get a raise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"So, crying-laughing emoji, you\u2019re not going to believe this\u2014but, spiral-eyes emoji, a psychological experiment has found that incorporating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":384017,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[141046,183302,85,46,1587,125],"class_list":{"0":"post-384016","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-workplace-wellbeing","9":"tag-emojis","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-psychology","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/384017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}