I Find Psychology Interesting
A couple of recent studies caught my attention. The first involved over 200 students from one university. Divided into groups they were asked to imagine working on a project and during the course of this project they would get messages from teammates with four different emotional presentations: two such messages would include photographs, one of a neutral expression the other a smile. A third would include two smiley emoticons while a fourth would have no emoticons.
Results revealed the person with the smiling face was perceived as 'warmer' than the neutral expression and the non-emoticon message sender, while the sender with the 'smiley' emoticon was viewed as only slightly warmer than the neutral or non-emoticon sender.
However when it came to perception of competence, the 'smiler' came across as more competent than the neutral expression while the 'smiley' emoticon came across as less competent than the one without an emoticon.
The second was an online study involving 100 adults. The results in this one reflected no change in perceptions of warmth for the 'smileys' but when it came to competence it negatively affected the perception, so much so that it hampered the desire to share information with the author of that message. For this study information was defined as replying to the message and counting how many words in the reply, if there was one.
In short, the conclusion was using 'smiley' emoticons can have a negative impact on the perceived competence of the sender of a message, especially an online missive.
What are your thoughts on this?
Results revealed the person with the smiling face was perceived as 'warmer' than the neutral expression and the non-emoticon message sender, while the sender with the 'smiley' emoticon was viewed as only slightly warmer than the neutral or non-emoticon sender.
However when it came to perception of competence, the 'smiler' came across as more competent than the neutral expression while the 'smiley' emoticon came across as less competent than the one without an emoticon.
The second was an online study involving 100 adults. The results in this one reflected no change in perceptions of warmth for the 'smileys' but when it came to competence it negatively affected the perception, so much so that it hampered the desire to share information with the author of that message. For this study information was defined as replying to the message and counting how many words in the reply, if there was one.
In short, the conclusion was using 'smiley' emoticons can have a negative impact on the perceived competence of the sender of a message, especially an online missive.
What are your thoughts on this?
