Report: Emoji in Work Emails Convey Low Competence

A new report claims that the use of smiley faces and emojis in the workplace convey low competence.

A new study conducted by researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), University of Haifa, and Amsterdam University was recently published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science on July 31st. The study, which consisted of a number of experiments with 549 participants from 29 countries, stated that while smiling during face to face interactions in the workplace can convey warmth and happiness, visual representations of these facial expressions in emoji form do not convey the same message.

Ella Glikson, a post-doctorate fellow at the BGU, said in a news release, “Our findings provide first-time evidence that, contrary to actual smiles, smileys do not increase perceptions of warmth and actually decrease perceptions of competence. In formal business e-mails, a smiley is not a smile.” One of the experiments required test subjects to read work-related emails and assess the warmth and competence of the sender of the email. Researchers found that the emails that included smileys and emojis did not convey warmth at all but in fact portrayed the sender of the email as incompetent.

“The study also found that when the participants were asked to respond to e-mails on formal matters, their answers were more detailed and they included more content-related information when the e-mail did not include a smiley,” said Glikson. “We found that the perceptions of low competence if a smiley is included in turn undermined information sharing.” Arik Cheshin of the University of Haifa’s Department of Human Services, who worked on the study stated, “When you meet somebody for the first time, face to face, smiling is normal. Is a smiley or smile by email considered equivalent? No. Really no. It does not create that perception of warmth, of friendliness. It does not achieve that, whatever we might expect.”

Another interesting point in the study was that when smilies were sent without the identity of the sender being known to the test subject, subjects were more likely to assume the sender was female. However, this information had no influence on assessing competence or friendliness according to the report. “People tend to assume that a smiley is a virtual smile, but the findings of this study show that in the case of the workplace, at least as far as initial ‘encounters’ are concerned, this is incorrect,” Glikson concluded. “For now, at least, a smiley can only replace a smile when you already know the other person. In initial interactions, it is better to avoid using smileys, regardless of age or gender.”