Luor, T., Lu, H.-P., Wu, L.-L. and Tao, Y.-H., The effect of emoticon in simplex and complex task-oriented communication - An empirical study of instant
messaging, Computers in Human Behavior, Vol. 26, No. 5, 2010, 889-895.
The Effect of Emoticon in Simplex and Complex Task-Oriented
Communication:
An Empirical study of Instant Messaging
ABSTRACT
Many studies have shed the light on the understanding of general computer-mediated communication, Instant Messaging (IM), and emotion or emoticons, but little did we know about specifically the impacts of emoticon in task-oriented IM communications in workplace. This study addresses the above issue by conducting a three-stage case-study experiment to (1) categorize the workplace IM messages into coherent groups, (2) identify the most used emoticons (emblems) for expressing the positive, negative and neutral emotion in the case company, (3) tested the difference of receiver’s emotional effect on the received text message with and without emoticons, and (4) the intention to use emoticons in IM in workplace. Results showed that- (1) negative emoticons could cause negative effect in both simplex and complex task-oriented communications, (2) positive emoticons only created positive effect in complex communication and for female employee in simplex communication, (3) no significant difference found between task-oriented message with or without neutral emoticon. The intention of using emoticons in gender difference was not statistically significant but has a higher tendency on the female employees. Findings and suggestions at the end may illuminate the effect of emoticon used in IM in workplace.
The Effect of Emoticon in Simplex and Complex Task-Oriented
Communication:
An Empirical study of Instant Messaging
INTRODUCTION
Since the booming of internet and different communication channel, we have been witnessing an enormous increase in computer-mediated communication (CMC) such as the asynchronous CMC like email or the synchronous CMC like Instant Messaging (IM). More and more interactions take place via chatting tool; for example, lots of people use IM to chat privately as well as professionally. Furthermore, IM services also help us to maintain our relationships with friends and colleagues in different locations.
Because CMC has become so common in our daily lives, it raises a big question of how different online communication is from face-to-face (F2F) communication. For example, do people chat in IM the same way as in live interactions? Are our conversations presented in different ways and triggering different emotions or effects in CMC? Some studies had argued that CMC is a cold and unfriendly medium where emotions are very difficult to express1, while other studies have declared that the differences between CMC and F2F are not that big2. Sannomiya and Kawaguchi3 investigated the cognitive characteristics of CMC and F2F communication and suggested that F2F communication might support the discussion for production of ideas, while CMC support the discussion for the examination of ideas.
When discussing the tasked related function of IM, it is interesting to know whether emotion differs in CMC and F2F? It has been argued that the communication of emotions is more difficult in CMC than in F2F communication. Burgoon, Buller, and Woodall4 specifically concluded that nonverbal behavior pre-dominates the effects of language content in most conditions. What may appear in IM other than pure-text? Assuming the following scenario: “One day in the morning, when Ted concentrated on his morning work, suddenly his IM windows prompted an instant message from Monica “… what do you mean?” Ted was very angry at that time because of Monica’s rude action; however, he tried to figure out her true meaning and calm down himself first by returning her a message together with a happy emoticon - ☺. Instantly, Monica returned a text message together with a happy emoticon, too. This time, Ted had a different emotion and a better mood compared with previous message.” The above scenario tells us that the emoticon indeed somehow change the emotion effect between the IM users in
workplace. However, researchers have rarely studied the effect of emoticon of CMC in workplace, which is a concern since emoticon has been widely used in the workplace nowadays.
Emoticons are defined as means to express emotion—hence “emotional icon”—their actual function hinges on the definition of the word emotion. Emoticons can be considered a creative and visually salient way to add expression to an otherwise strictly text-based form. Some studies have also showed that female used more frequent non-verbal cues in CMC. Therefore, two primary research questions related to emoticons are presented as follows: First, what are the effects of emoticons on task-oriented message in IM in workplace? Second, whether there is any gender difference of emoticon used in IM in workplace？In order to conduct a case-study experiment in this study, two extra research questions follow: Third, what types of IM messages exist in the case company? Forth, how do the employees in the case company perceive the use IM in workplace? The research design will address to answer these four research questions after the background literature review next.
BACKGROUND LITERATE
CMC in Workplace & IM
Sproull and Kiesler1 argued that e-mail in workplace does not simply speed up the exchange of information butleads to the exchange of new information as well. In a field study in a Fortune 500 company, they examined e-mail communication atall levels of the organization and found that much of the informationconveyed through e-mail was information that wouldnot have been conveyed through another medium.
IM, another popular CMC tool after email, appears to be progressively used in the office. To sustain a communication convenient and efficiency advantage, employees use IM communication to arrange meetings, discuss projects and greet people. For example, Heavy IM users and frequent IM partners mainly used it to work together to discuss a broad range of topics via many fast-paced interactions per day each with many short turns and much threading and multitasking. Light users and occasional pairs generally used IM to coordinate for scheduling via fewer discussions per day5. In the study of IM usage in the workplace, Nardi et al.6 concluded that IM is used primarily for four functions, including (1) quick questions and clarifications, (2) coordination and scheduling work tasks, (3) coordinating impromptu social meetings, and (4) keeping in touch with friends and family. Variations of these functions are frequently mentioned in other researches7-11.
The characteristics or properties of IM includes that (a) IM conversations are brief, (b) media switching is prevalent, and (c) multitasking is common while conversing in IM 6-11. Robb 12 also argued that IM seems to be steadily advancing into the office environment whether the financial industry is ready for it or not. IM allows users to chat online offers real-time access to multiple associates. Wang’s studies13 showed that colleagues and superiors are the main objects when used inside organization. The presence of IM will likely increase its acceptance as a business communication tool. In workplace, one of CMC’s characteristics is task-oriented interactions14. Friendship development and personalized communication are more important for IM as a socializing tool and the factors that make IM useful as a socializing tool15. However, they also argued that IM could be for both social and task-related. The social aspects of IM are large, indeed, the maintenance of social relationships has been found to be an essential function of online communication networks. However, unlike F2F social groups, in which one can passively participate just by being present, online communication networks somehow require active participation if one is to receive social benefits16.
Emotion and Emoticon- the visible cue
Derks et al.17 argued that no indication show that CMC is a less emotional or less personally involving medium than F2F. On the contrary, they concluded that online and offline emotional communications were surprisingly similar, and if differences were found CMC showed more frequent and explicit emotion communication than F2F did. This is indirectly supported by Kato et al.’s18 conclusion that the affective traits influenced affective states in e-mail communications in their exploration of the affective aspect of CMC prior to the comparison between CMC and F2F.
Kato et. al.19 also showed that a tendency for unpleasant emotions, such as the negative emoticons of anger and anxiety, to increase when emotional cues transmitted were low, which has been proven to cause some misunderstandings in e-mail communication between senders and receivers. Spears and Lea20 also have proposed that norms and values associated with being online may promote uninhibited behaviors such as flaming. This idea was tested and showed by Orenga Castellá, Zornoza Abad, Prieto Alonso, and Peiró Silla21 that negative emotion expression appeared more often in CMC than in F2F, suggesting that it is the lack of visible cues that may reinforce an experience of anonymity and explain the results.
In the same way as non-verbal cues in F2F, emoticons also help to accentuate or emphasize a tone or meaning during message creation and interpretation22-23.
Furthermore, they help to communicate more clearly a current mood or mental state of the author24, thereby also providing additional social cues about this person25. Thus, emoticons serve the function of clarifying textual messages which is similar to non-verbal displays in F2F17,26. Some studies19,27-28 found that emoticon used in IM was popular via analyzing the message log or observing the prompting window. Especially, facial expressions have even greater effects than vocal and spatial nonverbal cues, which is important in judging positivity because receivers connect the smile with positivity, a connection that has no analogue in the body and the voice.
In particular, Huffaker & Calvert’s29 study implies that individuals at least feel the need to express some of their emotions with short symbols rather than text in weblog and other chat device-MSN. This is supported by Rivera, Cooke, and Bauhs30 that subjects who used emoticons were more satisfied with the system than subjects who had no access to emoticons. Therefore, it is obvious that emoticons have become commonplace in CMC, and emoticons have obviously found their way into the word list of the computer-using world.
Gender difference
About the study of gender difference in CMC, various authors have suggested that women’s more frequent non-verbal displays, especially smiling, could be reflected in a more frequent use of emoticons31-32. However, Walther and D'Addario26 argued that there were no gender differences in the tendency of sending emoticons with e-mail messages of their own creation, a contrary to the findings of Witmer and Katzman32 (1997) and Wolf33. Savicki and Kelley34 found that women in female-only groups had a more emotional style because of their repeated and plain self-disclosure. On one hand, Lee31 studied gender differences in instant messaging and showed that men rarely used emoticons in conversation with other men, but used more emoticons when interacting with women. For women, there is no difference in the use of emoticons in relation to their interaction collaborator: they use the same amount of emoticons in conversing with men than with other women31. On the other hand, Huffaker and Calvert29 analyzed emoticons in men’s and women’s blogs, and found that males posted more emoticons than females did.
Indeed, Herring35 found that women are ‘‘more likely to appreciate, thank, and apologize, and to be upset by violations of politeness’’, while men seem less concerned with graciousness and sometimes violate expected online conduct. However, Wolf 33 demonstrated that women did not use more emoticons, but they did use them in other ways. She also argued that, in real life, women tend to use emoticons more frequently to
communicate humor of solidarity, whereas men use them to display sarcasm.
Effect of emoticon
Lo’s study36 concluded that when Internet users face pure text without emoticons, most people cannot perceive the correct emotion, attitude, and attention intents. On the contrary, the use of visual cues together with text has been shown to create a more positive attitude than text alone37. In particular, researchers25,38 found that an emoticon in combination with verbal “flaming” messages modified the perceived hostility of the message. However, the effects were not consistent such that the same emoticon diminished the hostility of a message showing “tension” but increased the perceived hostility of more hostile wordiness. Unfortunately, Siegel et al.39 discovered that flaming is found more often in CMC than in F2F setting.
Derks et al.17 showed that participants used more emoticons in socio-emotional contexts than in task-oriented contexts. That is, facial displays are affected by social factors as well as emotions40-41. Some studies found that the motives for using emoticons are for expressing emotion, enhancing the verbal part of the message (act as a supporting emoticon), and expressing humor 42. These studies suggest that emoticons are regularly used and function as emblems for people’s feelings, in a similar way as non-verbal behaviors in F2F. Emoticons may be used to emphasize or clarify one’s feelings, but also to soften one’s negative tone and to regulate the interaction, just as smiles and frowns do in daily life.
In Walther et al.’s26 experiment of three common emoticons on message interpretations, the concludedthat emoticons' contributions were outweighed by verbal content, but a negativity effect demonstrated such that any negative message aspect—verbal or graphic—shifts message interpretationin the direction of the negative element.However, Derks et al.43 argued that emoticons do influence online message interpretation and conclude that positive message with a smile is rated more positively than a positive pure message, and a negative message with a supporting frown is more negative than a negative pure message. Nevertheless, they also argued that the emoticon do not have the strength to turn around the valence of the verbal message.
RESEARCH METHODS Objectives
Emoticons are graphic representations of facial expressionsthat many IM users embed in their messages. Thesesymbols are widely known and commonly recognized among CMC users, and they are described by most observersas substituting for the
nonverbal cues. According to the above background literature, as one of the most popular CMC tool, IM has not been investigated independently for its emoticon visible cue in workplace, the inconsistent interpretation of research outcomes for general emoticon effects and gender differences in CMC deserves an insightful examination. Therefore, it is highly important to understand the impacts of emoticons on the emotional interpretation of the conveyed text message in the organizational context.
This study sought to explore the effect of emoticons used in IM in an experimental approach, in which the independent variables contain message-type (simple or complex task), emoticons (positive, negative, neutral or none) and gender (female or male) while the dependent variable is the interpretation of receiver’s emotional effect with a focus limited to the impacts of facial expressions44.
Sample, procedures and measures
The experimental study was conducted in mid 2008 in a three-stage approach, which is described as follows:
First, the actual messages communicated in an organizational context were analyzed to categorize the messages most likely to appear via the channel of IM. This study collected 19,885 message logs generated by 199 employees within one month in a financial institution in Taiwan. Since this institution has launched IM for organizational communication more than 12 years at the time this study was conducted, the employees were at least fairly familiar with the applications of IM. Given the huge amount of the data, only 30% (the first 30% proportion, sorted by content in ascending order) of the complete set of collected logs (namely 6,000 messages) was analyzed. The text message of the logs can be categorized into the five groups: (1) discussing or coordinating tasks (complex communication)- 73%, (2) using emoticons to express emotion- 12%, (3) arranging or scheduling the meeting or appointment (simplex communication)- 6%, (4) greeting (simplex communication, for example: saying “hi”)- 5% and (5) linking http address and miscellaneous- 4%. As shown in the parentheses, groups 1, 3, and 4 are associated with either complex or simplex types of communication in workplace.
At the second stage, a survey was conducted to see how emoticons were jointly used to express emotions in the organizational context. Thirty-two employees in the aforementioned financial institution participated in this survey and were asked to choose one appropriate emoticon from the forty-eight emoticons, as shown in Table 1, to express their positive, negative, and natural emotions, respectively. The emoticons that received the most popularity were used in the last stage of this research, as experimental stimuli, to test the impacts of emoticons on receivers’ interpretations of the received
message. Participation was voluntary. No monetary incentives or bonus credits were provided as inducements to participate.
At the third stage, a 2 × 4 × 2 experiment was conducted. Specifically, three independent variables considered in this experiment are the message type of simple and complex tasks, the emoticon of positive, negative, neutral or none, and gender of female and male. Because this study was aimed to focus on task-oriented CMC in work place, emotional effect of emoticon related to social oriented communication such as the greeting message will not be surveyed at this study. Each of the participants received instant messages that include both (1) scheduling for a meeting belonging to the simplex message-type scenario and (2) discussing and asking for a discussion belonging to the complex message-type scenario toward the topic it addressed. Each text message was combined with one of the following four emoticon conditions: positive, negative, neutral, or none as the baseline condition. During the experiment, each participant was required to answer a questionnaire, which assessed their emotional reactions to the test messages. Participants were asked to express their feelings measured on a 5-point Liker-type scale ranging from 1 (very unhappy) to 5 (very happy).
To ensure the content validity of the survey45, a pre-test was conducted on 5 individuals who had ample experiences in IM use, including two executive MBA students, two employees of a financial corporation, and one professor in the department of Information Management. The procedure of the pre-test helped us to modify the questions and to make sure that respondents understood each question correctly. One hundred and eighty employees in the aforementioned company were invited to participate in the experiment. Seventy-six employees, 40 males and 36 females, voluntarily responded in one month. The factor of gender will also be included in the analysis of experimental results. Given that the independent variables of gender and type of emoticon were within-subjects, all participants received both complex and simplex task-oriented aforementioned, coupled with those four kinds of emoticon conditions.
In this stage, the intention to use emoticon in IM for employees in work place was also collected:Prior studies have different arguments about gender difference related to frequent use or tendency of emoticons in general CMC26,31-32, and some studies even had showed that females are more intensive user than male. Therefore, one more question was added to measure employee’s intention, scales from one to five (1: very unlikely, 5: very likely), to use emoticon in IM.
ANALYSES AND ERSULTS
participants occupied about 40% and male participants occupied about 60% of all participants, and about half of the participants’ age ranged from thirty to thirty nine. The descriptive statistics of the eight experiment conditions are presented in Table 3, for all, male and female participants. Analyses of variance (ANOVA) was used to test the difference of emotional effect between text message with and without emoticons by conducting it to each dependent measure for the effects of message type, emoticons and gender.
Table 4 summarized each of the t-test results when compare the difference of text message with and without emoticons in all, male and female participants. We have the following four findings. First, the negative emotion increases when negative emoticon combined with text messages in both the simplex communications and the complex communication for participants, which echoes Lo’s study35. Second, positive emoticon increases positive emotion only for complex message type for both genders. Third, for simplex message type, positive emoticon only increases positive emotions for females. Fourth, using neutral emoticons in IM do not affect the receivers’ emotion in both the simplex and complex task-oriented communication for all participants.
The average value of intention to use emoticon in IM is 4.03 with standard deviation of 0.66, which indicates a relative high intention to use. However, the difference of intention to use emoticon in IM wan not significant with t-value value equals to -1.8 and p-value equals to 0.076 between forty-six male participants (mean: 3.67, standard deviation: .85) and thirty female participants (mean: 4.0, standard deviation: .64). Even though the 0.05 significant-level was not accepted, there is a tendency that females still had a higher intention to use emoticon to express their emotion when using IM that the male did.
CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS
Drawing on the literature regarding the relationships of facialemoticon effect and text cues in IM, this study intended to explore plausible potential effects of emoticons in workplace. Research results show that IM text message containing emoticons did generate different emotional effect than text messages without emoticons in some scenarios. Therefore, the emoticon may serve the function of modified text messages. Separate conclusions and suggestions related to the four research questions are briefly summarized below.
Research question 3: Three types of messages
After analyzing the message logs of IM in the case company, three main message types which employees used IM to communicate most at work are concluded: (1) task-oriented simplex communication such as for scheduling meetings, (2) task-oriented complex communication such as for discussing or coordinating tasks, and (3) social oriented such as for greeting by saying hi. This result confirms some of the previous studies 5-6, 12-13. In addition to some study12 argued that IM has arrived as a financial planning tool for customer, this study further supports that using IM in financial industry can increase internal communication. According to this research scope, we suggest that IM platform in workplace should at least embed functions for scheduling meeting, discussing or coordinating tasks, and provide different emoticons for greeting.
Research questions 1 & 2: The effect of emoticons in task-oriented communication Based on the four findings regarding Table 4, some suggestions are proposed accordingly. First, since positive emoticons significantly increased the emotion when using IM in discussing and coordinating tasks, we suggest always using positive emoticons in work coordination, especially when the a tendency for unpleasant emotions between senders and receivers. Second, we suggest avoiding “flaming” emoticon in IM since it may cause unexpected negative emotion between communicators even if the original intention is just for kidding. Furthermore, we suggest the workplace IM system prompts a “warning” message whenever a flaming emoticon is used to minimize some unpleasant effects. Third, avoid using the neutral emoticon in unnecessary occasions since it made no significant differences compared to the pure text message, which may echo to the overuse claim by Walther and D'Addario’s study26 that its impact has been diminished, either culturally/historically, or as an individual user is first entertained and
later bored with the cuteness of them all.
Research questions 4 & 2: Intention to use IM and gender difference
First, based on our observation, we argue that employees are more likely to use emoticon contained in text message in workplace when communicate with their colleges. This result is in line with Rezabek and Cochenour’s study23 which suggested that the most common, widely recognized emoticons are most useful for communication. It may be that emoticons are a tie sign of sorts, signaling common knowledge. Furthermore, our finding may echo Walther and D'Addario’s study26 that argued the usage of emoticons can: (1) actually serve indirect socially communicative functions, (2) help writers of e-mail to act as a self-signaling cue, prompting the writer to write in such a way that is as expressive as the writers intends, and (3) help the writer to express, to check, and if need be to edit, that which may be unclear during initial message production. Though, they stated that emoticons are not communicative but generative.
Second, even the test result did not support that female participants intended to use IM more than the males did, we still argue that female has a higher tendency to use IM in workplace. Because females feel more pleasant in both simplex communication and complex communication, we suggest sending the positive emoticons with the text message to female partners for making the communication more smoothly. If there is some unpleasant emotion in the male only conversation group, then a mixed group should be encouraged to reduce the negative emotion in workplace.
Table 1. Template Of Emoticons
The most selected three emoticons used for ”positive”, “neutral” and “negative”
Table 2. Demographic Background Of Study Participants
Gender Female 30 39.5% Male 46 60.5% Age 20~29 17 22.3% 30~39 36 47.4% 40~49 18 23.7% > 50 5 6.6%
Table 3. Descriptive Statistic For All, Male And Female Participants
Question: Once your colleague send you the following message with IM, how do you feel? (1:very unhappy, 5:very happy)
Mean (Standard deviation) All N=76 Male N=46 Female N=30 We have to discuss in 5 minutes. 3.24
(.66)
3.29 (.63)
3.17 (.70)
We have to discuss in 5 minutes.
3.39 (.64) 3.32 (.68) 3.5 (.57) We have to discuss in 5 minutes.
3.31 (.64) 3.31 (.52) 3.3 (.79)
We have to discuss in 5 minutes.
2.4 (.76) 2.47 (.77) 2.3 (.75) Your opinion about the next step we should do? 3.38
(.57)
3.34 (.54)
3.43 (.63)
Your opinion about the next step we should do?
3.58 (.64) 3.55 (.58) 3.63 (.72)
Your opinion about the next step we should do?
3.44 (.67) 3.43 (.55) 3.47 (.82)
Your opinion about the next step we should do?
2.4 (.83) 2.46 (.75) 2.3 (.95)
Table 4. Summary of t-test results for All, Male And Female Participants Question: Once your colleague send you the following message with IM, how do you feel?
(1:very unhappy, 5:very happy)
ALL, N=76 Male, N=40 Female, N=36
We have to discuss in 5 minutes.
VS. We have to discuss in 5 minutes.
N N Y
(.02*) We have to discuss in 5 minutes.
N N N
We have to discuss in 5 minutes.
Y (.000**) Y (.000**) Y (.000**) Your opinion about the next step we
should do?
VS.
Your opinion about the next step we should do?
Y (.001**) Y (.012*) Y (.056*)
Your opinion about the next step we should do?
N N N
Your opinion about the next step we should do?
Y (.000**) Y (.000**) Y (.000**) Note: Y/N (p value), where Y means significant and N means non-significant
Author Disclosure Statement:
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