If you tend to flex your emoji communication talent in work emails, you should probably stop.

Like, right now.

For many, the addition of an emoji in WhatsApp messages or Instagram comments is the only way to communicate. Why put in a paragraph of effort when you could rather express your support like this:

🙌🌸🐲⭐️💦

On those platforms, emojis as a form of communication are acceptable – the norm, even. But there are other platforms where a simple smiley could be interpreted as the exact opposite of its intention.

Although used six billion times a day and described as the “fastest growing language in history’, reports The Telegraph, using emojis in an attempt to lighten the tone of a work email “can have the opposite effect to an actual smile for the person on the receiving end, researchers have found”:

Concluding that “a smiley is not a smile”, academics have even warned that peppering an email with emojis could harm your job prospects by making colleagues less likely to share information with you.

The effect can be so damaging that people are advised to avoid them at work all together, especially the first time you talk to someone.

Dr Ella Glikson, an expert in business and management at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, said: “Our findings provide first-time evidence that – contrary to actual smiles – smileys do not increase perceptions of warmth and actually decrease perceptions of competence.”

The study was published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, and was based on a series of experiments involving 549 people from 29 different countries.

Here’s how the study went down:

In one test they were asked to read a work-related e-mail and then evaluate the competence and warmth of the person sending it.

The participants all received the same message, but some of the emails included smileys while others did not.

The smileys in an e-mail had no effect on the perception of warmth and in fact the participants judged the sender as less competent, the study concluded.

Dr Glikson said: “The study also found 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.

“We found that the perceptions of low competence if a smiley is included in turn undermined information sharing,”

In contrast, when a photograph of a smiling person was sent with a message they were perceived as more competent and friendly than a person with a neutral face.

When the gender of the e-mail writer was unknown recipients were more likely to assume it was sent by a woman if it had a smiley.

The study also went on to say that it’s better to keep smiling emojis for when you actually know the person. Duh.

So, for now, regardless of your age or gender, keep the emojis to your friends’ Instagram posts, the people who know how to speak emoji.

I am sure, in due time, those who can’t speak emoji will adapt, unless The Emoji Movie has done more damage than intended.

[source:telegraph]