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Age Differences in the Interpretation of Facial Emojis: Classification on the Arousal-Valence Space

Emojis are universal tools that are frequently used to express people’s emotional states throughout daily communications. They are often applied in various fields of research, such as consumer surveys, as indicators of users’ emotional states. Further analyses of emoji interpretation among people wi...

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Autores principales: Kutsuzawa, Gaku, Umemura, Hiroyuki, Eto, Koichiro, Kobayashi, Yoshiyuki
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9333063/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35910971
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.915550
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author Kutsuzawa, Gaku
Umemura, Hiroyuki
Eto, Koichiro
Kobayashi, Yoshiyuki
author_facet Kutsuzawa, Gaku
Umemura, Hiroyuki
Eto, Koichiro
Kobayashi, Yoshiyuki
author_sort Kutsuzawa, Gaku
collection PubMed
description Emojis are universal tools that are frequently used to express people’s emotional states throughout daily communications. They are often applied in various fields of research, such as consumer surveys, as indicators of users’ emotional states. Further analyses of emoji interpretation among people with age are required to ensure the validity of emojis as a metric in such fields of research, thereby reducing misunderstandings. However, details regarding the effect of age on both arousal and valence, as they pertain to the interpretation of emojis, remain unclear. Therefore, in this study, we investigate the effects of the interpretation of facial emojis on the arousal-valence space among people of varying age groups. We conducted an online survey involving 2,000 participants, whereby we employed a nine-point scale to evaluate the valence and arousal levels associated with 74 facial emojis. Based on the two axes of valence and arousal among the age groups involved in this study, emojis are categorized into six similar clusters. For the two negative clusters, i.e., strongly negative and moderately negative sentiments, the group involving middle-aged participants showed significantly higher levels of arousal compared to the group involving young participants. Additionally, not all emojis classified into the aforementioned negative clusters indicate age difference. Based on these results, this study recommends using emojis with no age-related effects on the negative clusters as indices for evaluating human emotions.
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spelling pubmed-93330632022-07-29 Age Differences in the Interpretation of Facial Emojis: Classification on the Arousal-Valence Space Kutsuzawa, Gaku Umemura, Hiroyuki Eto, Koichiro Kobayashi, Yoshiyuki Front Psychol Psychology Emojis are universal tools that are frequently used to express people’s emotional states throughout daily communications. They are often applied in various fields of research, such as consumer surveys, as indicators of users’ emotional states. Further analyses of emoji interpretation among people with age are required to ensure the validity of emojis as a metric in such fields of research, thereby reducing misunderstandings. However, details regarding the effect of age on both arousal and valence, as they pertain to the interpretation of emojis, remain unclear. Therefore, in this study, we investigate the effects of the interpretation of facial emojis on the arousal-valence space among people of varying age groups. We conducted an online survey involving 2,000 participants, whereby we employed a nine-point scale to evaluate the valence and arousal levels associated with 74 facial emojis. Based on the two axes of valence and arousal among the age groups involved in this study, emojis are categorized into six similar clusters. For the two negative clusters, i.e., strongly negative and moderately negative sentiments, the group involving middle-aged participants showed significantly higher levels of arousal compared to the group involving young participants. Additionally, not all emojis classified into the aforementioned negative clusters indicate age difference. Based on these results, this study recommends using emojis with no age-related effects on the negative clusters as indices for evaluating human emotions. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-07-14 /pmc/articles/PMC9333063/ /pubmed/35910971 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.915550 Text en Copyright © 2022 Kutsuzawa, Umemura, Eto and Kobayashi. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Kutsuzawa, Gaku
Umemura, Hiroyuki
Eto, Koichiro
Kobayashi, Yoshiyuki
Age Differences in the Interpretation of Facial Emojis: Classification on the Arousal-Valence Space
title Age Differences in the Interpretation of Facial Emojis: Classification on the Arousal-Valence Space
title_full Age Differences in the Interpretation of Facial Emojis: Classification on the Arousal-Valence Space
title_fullStr Age Differences in the Interpretation of Facial Emojis: Classification on the Arousal-Valence Space
title_full_unstemmed Age Differences in the Interpretation of Facial Emojis: Classification on the Arousal-Valence Space
title_short Age Differences in the Interpretation of Facial Emojis: Classification on the Arousal-Valence Space
title_sort age differences in the interpretation of facial emojis: classification on the arousal-valence space
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9333063/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35910971
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.915550
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