By Nastya Nudnik, dedicated to Edward Hopper
Despite the fact that emoticons have been around since the 80s, it can still feel a little weird to use them in a professional setting. But research shows that these “pictorial representations of feelings” actually have a positive effect on communication.
For example, one University of Missouri-St. Louis study tested how people perceive smiley faces in work emails vs. in social emails. Researchers sent a group of participants two messages, one a flirtatious social email and one extending a job interview request, and added emoticons to some of each. The results: the smileys in both types of emails made the recipient like the sender more, and also feel that the sender liked them more. Even in the work email, the sender’s credibility wasn’t affected at all:
In a task-oriented context, where impersonal, cold, and unsociable features of computer-mediated communication are strongly encouraged in order to build credibility or professionalism, using emoticons in e-mail might create a positive expectancy violation by being friendly, emotional, and personal.
Positive emoticons can also soften the blow of negative feedback, and assure the recipient of the critique of the deliverer’s good intentions. Perhaps most convincingly, they’ve also been shown to contribute to a generally happier workplace:
Since we don’t get the chance to share facial expressions and other nonverbal cues in our emails, they can sometimes be tougher to interpret. But emoticons might be able to help…. [They] could help employees in remote locations more accurately “read” the emotional content of a message and could help mitigate cyber aggression and conflict over email by clarifying messages and giving the conversation a more “light-hearted” tone.
Next time you’re questioning the validity of throwing a smiley face into your email to your colleague or client, try to swallow those doubts and give it a go. If anything, do so for selfish reasons: a 2008 Journal of Information & Management study found that emoticon users experience a “positive effect on enjoyment, personal interaction, perceived information richness, and perceived usefulness.”
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