Decoding Emotions: The Influence of Colors on Emojis

• João Felipe Francelino da Silva UERN
• Wanderson Marques de Macedo Moura UERN
• Raul Benites Paradeda UERN

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5753/sbcup.2024.2043

Abstract

This study explores the relationship between emojis and the six universal emotions identified by Paul Ekman. Simplified emojis were designed to represent these emotions and validated via an online survey. Additionally, the study examined the influence of color on emotion perception in emojis. Participants rated the intensity of emotions depicted by differently colored emojis. The findings show that color can alter perceived emotional intensity and the emojis can also introduce perceptions’ ambiguity. The research has implications for human interaction studies, highlighting the need for further investigation into color’s role in emoji interpretation and potential ambiguity.

Keywords: Basic Universal Emotions, Emojis, Color Influence, Emotional Perception

References

Ekman, P. (2003). A Linguagem das Emoções. Lua de Papel, São Paulo.

Ekman, P. and Oster, H. (1979). Facial expressions of emotion. Annual review of psychology, 30(1):527–554.

Erle, T. M., Schmid, K., Goslar, S. H., and Martin, J. D. (2022). Emojis as social information in digital communication. Emotion, 22(7):1529.

Ferreira, F. J. (2013). Os emoticons e a teoria da polidez em mensagens instantâneas entre adolescentes e jovens adultos. Dissertação (mestrado em literaturas de língua inglesa; literatura brasileira; literatura portuguesa; língua portuguesa), Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro.

Hancock, P. M., Hilverman, C., Cook, S. W., and Halvorson, K. M. (2023). Emoji as gesture in digital communication: Emoji improve comprehension of indirect speech. Psychonomic bulletin & review, pages 1–13.

Liao, S., Sakata, K., and Paramei, G. V. (2022). Color affects recognition of emoticon expressions. i-Perception, 13(1):20416695221080778.

Mehta, R. and Zhu, R. (2009). Blue or red? exploring the effect of color on cognitive task performances. Science, 323(5918):1226–1229.

Palmer, S. E. and Schloss, K. B. (2010). An ecological valence theory of human color preference. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(19):8877–8882.

Shoeb, A. A. M. and De Melo, G. (2021). Assessing emoji use in modern text processing tools. arXiv preprint arXiv:2101.00430.

Zang, E. and Camiloti, L. (2012). Um estudo sobre as cores e sua aplicabilidade em ambientes de creches infantis. Unoesc & Ciência ACSA, 3(1):37–44.