Now that we are aware of emoticons’ social significance, researchers have begun to investigate exactly how they can influence us during conversations. For example, one recent study found that using smiley face emoticons when delivering negative feedback to employees improved the chances of that feedback being accepted, so long as the feedback itself was specific. Other research found that students could be made more willing to participate in online classes when emoticons were used in online discussion groups.

How you use emoticons can even reveal identifying details about who you are. Women, for instance, characteristically use emoticons at a higher frequency than men.

All of this suggests that our connection to these characters and faces is anything but trivial. It’s even been shown that emoticons provoke activity in our brains which is similar to brain activity registered when we look at a real human face.

In other words, we have been culturally conditioned to react to emoticons in strong ways. They really do carry complex and meaningful emotions in ways that standard words cannot.

Social cues

It’s no wonder, then, that Facebook has invested in developing sophisticated picture-like emoticons. Last year, psychologist Dacher Keltner of University of California, Berkeley was commissioned by the social media giant to help design a new array of animated emoticons, more like the cartoon icons sometimes described as “emoji”, expressing everything from “feeling anxious” to “indignant”.

He explains that Facebook wants to find new ways of allowing users to communicate in non-verbal ways. “The more individuals use emoticons, the more they’re likely to communicate with each other and respond to each other’s messages and replies,” he suggests.

Keltner says that these experiments suggest that emoticons of the future could be even more elaborate if they are to fully capture the essence of any emotion which we want to deliver in a single message. If they could capture our own appearance, body language or tone of voice somehow, perhaps we could create truly idiosyncratic emoticons tailored for use only by a given individual with their partner, family members or close friends.