An emoji is basically a pictogram - a visual image inserted along with text such as in the form of a smiley face. The major purpose that emojis serve is to incorporate emotions and feelings into your electronic messaging. Since face-to-face conversation is not possible via voice calls or texts, it is irksome to convey your facial expressions or intended thoughts correctly to your correspondent. Therefore through the pictorial representation through emojis and emoticons you can very easily allow smooth and clear communication with your friends or family on an informal basis. This is a kind of new language on its own with 72 new emojis being discovered including the very essential ones like the avocado, face palming selfie ones. The Unicode Standard is the character coding system that supports emoji rendering on different platforms and provides these entertaining icons on social media.

Origination of Emojis

Languages can be in any form even as visual symbols because the earliest writing also evolved from symbols resembling the emojis. It is without a doubt that Japan is the homeland of emoji development because the country has a complex writing script and a very visual culture. Originally meaning pictograph, the word emoji comes from Japanese e 'picture' + moji 'character.’ Its resemblance to the English words emotion and emoticon are merely coincidental. These emojis originated in the Japanese mobiles in 1997 and gained worldwide popularity in 2010s when they were incorporated in various mobile operating systems. Not only children but adults too are utilizing emojis for improved interactions. This is proved through the fact that 80% adults in the UK add emojis in their texts while 40% admitted to composing entire messages based on emojis. Emoji exist in various genres, including facial expressions, common objects, places and types of weather, and animals.

Benefits of using Emojis

They can prove to be great substitutes for words or even replace whole phrases. In 2015, a research by Emogi found that online communication has been significantly cut shorter due to the use of emojis. It is also modifying the internet slang and common abbreviations such as LOL are no longer being used for they are replaced by the emojis with a tear-faced laugh. A study by the University of Valencia suggested that the thumbs up emoji on WhatsApp plays many roles. It can notify approval, show a sigh of informality and close the discussion on a polite and light-hearted note. This is a creative language and when used in text-based messaging it can help to compliment rather than replace what we want to convey to others.

Emojis as Expressions of Emotions

Just like punctuation, emojis can be used to deliver irony or humor and substitute body language or the tone of voice in text-based messaging. Psychologist Albert Mehrabian's 7%-38%-55% rule suggests that only 7% of the information we receive while talking to someone reflects what they actually say. The rest is based on their actions, behavior, tone, accent and diction. Emojis and their typographical counterparts called emoticons can arouse an emotional response in individuals such as inducing empathy. In business communications emojis can reduce negative feelings such as when conveying rejections or complaints. Using a smiley at the end of an email can mitigate the overarching feeling of condescension and intimidation. It makes the sender of the email look friendlier and less professional somehow.

Neuroscientist Owen Churches from the University of Adelaide discovered that the same region in the brain is activated when seeing an emoji or an emoticon as when seeing an actual face. According to a psychology study emojis can help us deepen our self awareness and allows an improved sense of interpreting our own feelings. When we master the art of identifying and labeling our emotions effectively, only then can we be receptive to the feelings of other people. Emojis make the communication more interesting by sprinkling fun-filled aesthetically pleasing pictographs.

Employ the Best Positive Emoji

People use more positive emotions than negative ones while experimenting with emojis in communication. Emojis used across the globe showed that happy faces - including winks, kisses, smiles, grins - were used 44.8% of the time, while sad and angry faces were only applied in 14.33% of cases. The third most frequent emoji type was the hearts (12.5%) and amongst the hand gestures, the thumbs-up and victory sign emojis were top choices. Again all of these represent positive emotions. Similarly, anthropomorphic figures were preferred as over 60% of all emojis shared accounted for the face emojis. A term coined as Impression Management relays that people usually tend to portray themselves in a positive light on social media which is why there are so many smileys and lesser of other emojis. Additionally humans feel more difficulty expressing any other emotion than happiness using symbols.

Reflect your Personality

According to research people who are more agreeable tend to use more emojis on social media. This is because agreeableness is a trait that extends to improved and jolly communication with people in the real world as well. Optimistic and courteous people use encouraging words and symbols when talking to others. The same case is that a link can be found between using emojis and possessing a certain social media power. Influencers who have a wider reach and impact on audiences use more emojis in their posts than the lesser known influencers. Gender also poses a trend when it comes to using emojis with women more frequently inserting these emoticons for clear communication than men. Moreover, it is even stated that women insert emojis to express a wide range of emotions while men mostly use it in the context of sarcasm or teasing. Guessing someone’s occupation is also possible as the University of Rochester concludes that office clerks use more emojis and express greater negative emotions than people involved in professions like IT, marketers or start-up developers. Designers and PR professionals are also inclined to use more emojis than others. This is why knowing your particular type of smiley is crucial in displaying what type of personality traits you want to showcase as part of your social media profile.