How Do The Emoticons We Use Influence Our Brain?

The way we communicate is changing at breakneck speed. In fact, it looks like the wagon that is hooked on the locomotive of technology, which has gone from useful to essential and, in some cases, the tyrant. With it, we go back to writing to talk to those who are far away or to decorate the display that our social media profile wall has become. Emoticons exist precisely to save one of the limitations of written communication.

What do emoticons do? The most common is that they simulate our face, that they accompany a message so that it is understood in the right tone. “Hello! (Smiling face) How are you? (Happy face)” is not the same as “Hello! How are you doing?”. In fact, emoticons help to rescue our written way of communicating because it is often serious. That’s how we interpret it, and if the “accompanying” emoticon is missing, it’s not uncommon to think the other person is angry.

On the other hand, if we start writing without emoticons, we can have the feeling that the message we send may have the complete information, but at the same time it doesn’t seem to be the way we would like.

The origin and importance of emoticons

We could say that emoticons are indicators of emotions. The first emoticon dates back to 1982 and the author was computer engineer Scott Fahlman. The use he implemented is very similar to what we use today, as he used them on the forums as an indicator when it came to differentiating messages with an ironic and cheerful tone from those that were more serious.

Since then, the evolution has been such that in 2015 the Oxford dictionary chose an emoji, exactly the one that cries with laughter, as the word of the year. Maybe they went a little overboard with this decision, but it gives us an idea of ​​how these forms of communication were naturally integrated into the way we express ourselves.

They are no longer forums, but we, like Scott Fahlman, continue to use the smiley face to brighten the tone of a message, or as a response to a funny message. In fact, the typical “hahaha” is getting closer and closer to being retired because the emoticon is more real representing our gesture than this succession of letters that we rarely reproduce.

How do we process emoticons?

When a new form of communication appears, a new challenge for science also arises: to understand what the effects of this form of communication on people are. Well then, research carried out by Yuasa, Saito and Mukawa in 2006 demonstrated, using MRIs as a correlate of the participants’ brain activity, that emoticons are not recognized as faces. That is, the right fusiform gyrus, which is normally activated in face recognition, remained inactive in the face of exposure to emoticons.

However, this is not what is relevant. The relevant thing is that we are able to identify each emoticon – at least the most popular ones – with different emotions. So what these researchers tell us is that they are good at their job.

In other research, Churches, Nicholls, Thiessen, Kohler and Keage (2014) reached a different conclusion, claiming that both faces and emoticons activate the same brain areas.

One way or another, it seems that thanks to our ability to learn associatively, our brains have created a relationship between emoticons and the emotions they are meant to represent. Thanks to this and to technology, it seems that these small drawings, represented even by stuffed animals, have come to our way of relating to stay.

Emoticons and personality

The study of emoticons offers very wide possibilities. One question we can ask ourselves is whether the emoticons we use say anything about our personality beyond the immediate communication context of which they are a part.

Thus, according to a small experiment carried out by publicist Daniel Brill, the habitual use of the face that cries with laughter would speak of excessively provocative personalities, the use of the face that laughs showing the teeth of defensive personalities, and the excessive use of some animal, such as the octopus, would speak of a personality that has problems to relate.

These notes do not go beyond curiosity, as the study had enough methodological flaws that the conclusions were not considered solid. However, the truth is that there is a very rich field that has yet to be explored, because if anything seems clear it is that emoticons are here to stay.