For most people in Nigeria, a statement doesn’t become fact unless backed by some religious saying, or by science. So for all those who think using emoticons in conversations is childish and immature, scientific research has proved that using emoticons actually improves the quality of your conversation in 7 ways. 7!
- Emoticons Make You More Popular on Social Media
According to a research carried out by Simo Tchokni of the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory and her colleagues, using various metrics such as number of followers and Klout score, their study concluded that “The emoticon features achieved high performance, suggesting that there is a strong link between emoticon use and social power. Powerful users tend to use emoticons often and high Klout is strongly associated with positive emoticons,”
- We React to Them As We Would An Human Face
Scientists have proven that people react to emoticons as they would to an human face wearing the same expressions, and this makes a difference because human faces tend to be attention grabbers. Dr.Owen Churches, of the school of psychology at Flinders University in Adelaide, told ABC Science that “Emoticons are a new form of language that we’re producing, and to decode that language, we’ve produced a new pattern of brain activity,”
- They Are Okay Even in Business
A University of Missouri-St. Louis study sent two types of email messages to a group—one a flirtatious message, another extending a job interview request—and added emoticons to some of each. The researchers discovered that both types of fictional emails didn’t affect the sender’s credibility even when they used up to four emoticons.
- They Make You Seem More Friendly and Competent
People who participated in a chat(study) with ‘health experts’ and ‘film experts’ who either used or avoided emoticons rated experts in both fields friendlier and more competent when they used emoticons in their communication.
What are you waiting for, swallow your pride and embrace emoticons!
Read the rest of these amazing scientific discoveries about emoticons here.