People follow emotion display rules when choosing emoticons on social media

ABSTRACT

This study examined whether people use emoticons on Facebook in the same way they display emotions via facial expressions in face-to-face interaction. In an online experimental study (N = 124), participants completed the “Emoticon Display Rules on Facebook” (EDRF) scale adapted from the Display Rule Assessment Inventory (DRAI). People tend to use more positive emoticons in public settings, and more negative ones in private settings. They also use more and more intense emoticons with close friends and acquaintances than strangers. This study provides further support for the positivity bias on Facebook and shows that emoticons are simply used to express emotions in the same ways as in face-to-face interactions.

KEYWORDS:

• Emoticons
• display rules
• social media
• emotions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/zsx9y/?view_only=7fecfd854f05455884867d2dedbd0152.

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/zsx9y/?view_only=7fecfd854f05455884867d2dedbd0152

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/08824096.2024.2318040.

Notes

1. Similar result was found when we select only participants who used emoticons in each item of the EDRF. Among them, a significant difference in psychological closeness was observed between the type of relationship, F(2,76) = 199.28, p < .001, η2 = .758. All three Bonferroni’s post-hoc analysis with correction were significant in pairs (p < .001), revealing that participants felt closer to the friend (M = 3.82; SD = 0.91), than to the acquaintance (M = 2.26; SD = 0.99) and to the stranger (M = 1.28; SD = 0.92).

2. The score for France on the Hofstede’s (1980) scale is 71 on a scale ranging from 0 to 100.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anthony Cherbonnier

Anthony Cherbonnier is a post-doctoral fellow in social psychology and ergonomics at the University of Rennes 2 (France) where he obtained his PhD. His research focuses on emotion in online environments, collaborative skills and human-computer interaction.

Genavee Brown

Genavee Brown is an Assistant Professor of social psychology at Northumbria University (UK) in the Department of Psychology. Her work centers on how social identities like culture, gender, and sexual orientation influence our online interactions.

Nicolas Michinov

Nicolas Michinov is a Professor of social and applied psychology at the University of Rennes 2 (France). He studies individual and group processes to determine their influence on different outcomes (e.g. performance, creativity and emotional states), and in different contexts, such as collaborative working, collaborative learning and online learning.