Hearts & Minds: Laughing out loud at the boss’s emojis

Emojis are everywhere. 😃 A quick way of communicating in 1999 has moved seamlessly from messaging to corporate emails. 👌 They’ve reproduced so there are symbols for virtually every type of occasion and mood. 👍 Yes, but do we know what they really mean, what they signify? 🤔 That’s enough, stop being lazy and get back to words, Ed. 🙁

New research shows they’re use conveys sides of your personality that you might not like the receiver to know. The study in Current Psychology questioned 258 undergraduates with an average age of 20 about their personalities and repeated sending of 40 symbols.

Women favour them more than men, possibly because they’re on social media and text message more frequently. Those men that reach for the emoji deck a lot, however, are disclosing something about their behaviour they would presumably prefer to hide, that they may well possess Machiavellian tendencies and neuroticism, they are manipulative and partial to mood swings. Women heavy users could be narcissistic.

What does this mean, apart from 😂? Seriously, that the man is seeking to get the receiver to be like them, to share their thinking, while the woman is boosting her appeal. She wants to be liked. Darker are those, usually sent by men: the ‘pile of poo’, ‘exploding head’ and ‘face screaming in fear’.

The study concludes that previous analysis of emojis and their senders may be wrong - they were associated with introverts. Not so, extroverts love them.

There is a professional aspect, as the researchers note: ‘Increasingly, companies are mining the contents of social media posts to estimate information about social media users’ characteristics.’ Emojis form a valuable part of psychological profiling, helping marketeers sell their wares and those in comms wishing to influence.

This analysis joins other papers, among which one is especially telling. Students said they would likely respond well to a teacher who sent smiley faces. At the same time, it made them doubt the teacher’s competence and not hold the teacher in such high regard. Emojis may make the boss popular, getting down with the kids, but they can lower their standing.

The research does force a think, about those people you know who adorn every message and posting with a facial expression or gesture or object. What are they trying to say? Don’t forget, as another study disclosed, more than a third of us credit emojis with destroying the English language. 😱

Chris Blackhurst is one of the UK’s foremost business journalists. He was previously Editor of The Independent and City Editor of the Evening Standard.