Why it is worth using emoticons not only in personal, but also in business correspondence

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Emoticons help convey your emotions, soften criticism and appear friendly and open in correspondence. Moreover, modern research shows that emoticons provide popularity on social networks, help to remember information and can even make a person happier.

Now emoticons have become such a familiar way of expressing emotions that almost no dialogue with friends and colleagues can do without them.

When it comes to business correspondence, people try to avoid emoticons because it looks “frivolous”. And maybe in vain. Emoticons help a person appear friendlier and more open in online correspondence and even improve the real mood.

Having a good mood isn't all that emoji can do, however, and here are seven studies that prove it.

1. Smilies are associated with popularity on social networks

An analysis of over 31 million tweets and half a million Facebook posts showed that positive emoticons increase the popularity of people on social media.

Leader Simo Choknai from the Cambridge Computer Lab and her colleagues compared users by the number of followers and the Klout Score (a tool that takes into account a whole set of parameters for assessing authority in social networks).

It turned out that people using positive emoticons most often have a high Klout Score and are quite popular on Twitter.

Positive emojis have become an indicator of high influence on social media - on both Twitter and Facebook.

2. A person reacts to an emoticon like a real smiling face

Australian scientists from Flinders University in Adelaide (Flinders Univercity) and found that when a person looks at a smiley, the same parts of the brain are activated as when he sees a real smiling face.

However, this only works if you read the emoticon from left to right. That is, if the emoticon is printed like this :-), parts of the brain are activated, and if so (-:then no.

Emoticons have become a new form of language that humanity has created, and in order to recognize this language, certain patterns of behavior are created in the brain.

Dr. Owen Churches is a scientist at the Flinders University School of Psychology in Adelaide

The smiling face is used heavily in marketing and the media, as it is a very effective way of influencing. And since our brain does not see any difference between a real face and emoticons, why not use it for our own purposes?

Most of us pay more attention to our face than everything else. It has been experimentally proven that people tend to react more vividly and diversely to faces, and not to other categories of objects.

Owen Church

3. Smilies are good even for business correspondence

Yes, there are still many areas in which emoticons are inapplicable, but they are gradually making their way into the business arena. More and more work emails are being supplemented with smilies, and it proves that people are not at all against it.

Scientists at the University of St. Louis, Missouri, investigated how people perceive emoticons in business and personal emails. The group of participants in the experiment was shown two types of letters: a personal letter in a flirty tone and a request for an interview for a job. Scientists have added emoticons to some of these letters.

The participants in the experiment liked the senders using emoticons more, regardless of whether it was a business letter or a personal one.

They felt that the sender of the letter was more friendly, and, accordingly, they liked him more than the one who wrote his letters without emoticons.

That is, emoticons in business letters did not embarrass the participants in the experiment and did not reduce the level of trust in the applicant who sent such a positive interview request. Even when up to four emojis appeared in a business letter, people still treated the applicant well.

Typically, in business letters, it is customary to use a dry, impersonal tone to show your professionalism and build trust with employers or clients.

However, after the experiment, scientists concluded that emoticons make business letters friendly, emotional and personal, which people really like and do not cause them resentment or distrust of the author of the letter.

4. Smilies soften criticism

If you are about to respond to someone with a critical comment about their work, emojis can help soften the impression of your feedback and not generate hostile backlash.

Chinese scientists have proven that when they receive criticism and feedback from their superiors, softened by emoticons, employees perceive them much better and get to work with great enthusiasm, correcting what was said in the letter.

Emoticons reduce the level of negativity in the letter and reassure the employee of the sender's good intentions. So he gets to work with great enthusiasm.

5. Smilies help you appear more friendly and competent

If in Internet correspondence you want to create an image of an intelligent and open-minded person, the same emoticons will help.

Proof of this can be found in the results of which participants chatted with "experts in the field of health" and "experts in the field of the film industry."

Some "experts" used emoticons in their communication, others did not. As a result, the most competent and friendly were those who added positive emoticons.

In addition, this study revealed another great feature of communication using emoticons: they help to better remember the information read. Here's what the author of the study writes:

Emoticons seem to increase cognitive abilities, as in conversations using emoticons, participants memorized the contents of the chat much better.

6. Emoticons make work more comfortable

The negative effect of email has long been known. It lies in the fact that the recipient of the email looks more negative than it really is. That is, the sender did not include in the letter that negative connotation that the recipient sees.

This is because, when communicating via email, we do not hear the tone of voice that reflects the real emotions of the interlocutor, and we also cannot evaluate non-verbal signs.

To prevent your emails from being perceived negatively, you can eliminate this effect by using emoticons.

In 2013, researchers at the University of Florida conducted the following study: 152 employees read different emails, with or without emoticons, during their workflow.

Sample message:

I cannot come to the meeting you have scheduled because I am meeting with other staff at this time. Email me and let me know what I'm missing.

Or like this:

I cannot come to the meeting you have scheduled because I am meeting with other staff members at this time. Email me and let me know what I'm missing.:-)

When participants were asked what they thought of these messages, it was found that emoticons reduce the negative effect in business emails: refusing to meet was perceived much less negatively when it was supplemented with an emoticon.

Smilies help convey the sender's tone, make him friendlier and warmer. Scientists believe that incorporating emoticons into work correspondence will help telecommuters more accurately understand the tone of emails and reduce the amount of aggression and tension in the work environment.

7. Emoticons are associated with pleasure

And the last reason to include emoticons in your correspondence more often is pleasure and a sense of happiness.

conducted back in 2008 showed that people who use emoticons experience more pleasure, perceive information more intensely and get more benefit from it.