earticle

영어

We aimed to see if approach-avoidance visual experience would have different effects in the valence rating of emojis. Previous literature has shown that approach-avoidance tendencies have influences people’s emotional perceptions. Up until now, research on emojis have been heavily focused on static emojis, which gives room for exploration whether if movement added on to emoji would elicit different emotional responses. In the study, we examined the impact of approach-avoidance visual experience of emojis via mobile interface, categorized into 4 experimental conditions (positive approach, negative approach, positive avoid, and negative avoid), and conducted semi-structured interviews to identify users’ reasonings towards their valence ratings on specific emojis with approach or avoid movements. We found that positive approach emojis were the highest valence rating and preferred by the participants, while there were no differences between negative emoji approach or avoidance. Based on these findings, we conclude that positive emojis could be intensified to be more positive with approach motion, yet for negative emojis, individual differences or contextual differences may arise in its emotional ratings.