Fischer Brigitte, Herbert Cornelia
Applied Emotion and Motivation Psychology, Institute of Psychology and Education, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2021 Apr 20;12:645173. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.645173. eCollection 2021.
An important function of emoji as communicative symbols is to convey emotional content from sender to receiver in computer-mediated communication, e. g., WhatsApp. However, compared with real faces, pictures or words, many emoji are ambiguous because they do not symbolize a discrete emotion or feeling state. Thus, their meaning relies on the context of the message in which they are embedded. Previous studies investigated affective judgments of pictures, faces, and words suggesting that these stimuli show a typical distribution along the big two emotion dimensions of valence and arousal. Also, emoji and emoticons have been investigated recently for their affective significance. The present study extends previous research by investigating affective ratings of emoji, emoticons and human faces and by direct comparison between them. In total, 60 stimuli have been rated by 83 participants (eight males, age: 18-49 years), using the non-verbal Self-Assessment Manikin Scales for valence and arousal. The emotionality of the stimuli was measured on a 9-point Likert scale. The results show significant main effects of the factors "stimulus category" and "discrete emotion" including emotionality, valence and arousal. Also, the interaction between these two main factors was significant. Emoji elicited highest arousal, whereas stimuli related to happiness were rated highest in valence across stimulus categories. Angry emoji were rated highest in emotionality. Also, the discrete emotion was best recognized in emoji, followed by human face stimuli and lastly emoticons.
表情符号作为交流符号的一个重要功能是在计算机介导的交流中，如WhatsApp，将情感内容从发送者传递给接收者。然而，与真实面孔、图片或文字相比，许多表情符号含义模糊，因为它们并不象征一种离散的情绪或情感状态。因此，它们的含义依赖于其所嵌入的信息的上下文。先前的研究调查了对图片、面孔和文字的情感判断，表明这些刺激在效价和唤醒这两个主要情感维度上呈现出典型的分布。此外，最近也对表情符号和表情图标的情感意义进行了研究。本研究通过调查表情符号、表情图标和人脸的情感评分，并对它们进行直接比较，扩展了先前的研究。共有60种刺激物由83名参与者（8名男性，年龄：18 - 49岁）使用用于效价和唤醒的非言语自我评估人体模型量表进行评分。刺激物的情感性通过9点李克特量表进行测量。结果显示“刺激物类别”和“离散情绪”因素在情感性、效价和唤醒方面有显著的主效应。此外，这两个主要因素之间的交互作用也很显著。表情符号引发的唤醒程度最高，而与快乐相关的刺激物在所有刺激物类别中效价值被评为最高。愤怒的表情符号在情感性方面被评为最高。此外，离散情绪在表情符号中最容易被识别，其次是人脸刺激物，最后是表情图标。
