Emojis are used every day and everywhere, especially in online conversations and social media that are

negative emojis in online text messaging and how different emojis are seen differently by different people.

This quantitative research explored the perceptions of emojis among university students in the Academy of

Language Studies at University Technology MARA, Shah Alam. Through an online survey with 100 students,

students’ emotional intelligence was not correlated with their perception towards the usage of emojis. Further

Emojis are a large part of our communication nowadays, especially in digital applications like WhatsApp. It is

an integral part of communication that the emojis are used to represent words while maintaining its logical

meaning and comprehensibility (Durscheid and Meletis, 2019). According to Kennison et al. (2024), emojis

are digital pictures represented online to express emotions and ideas. Emojis are considered non-verbal cues

that provide contextual information, emotional state, and personality traits in a person (Aragon and Santos,

2024). Emojis act as a representative of one’s emotional state, which can soften the intention of the message

and appear more polite. Certain emojis are used to reinforce our intention of sending the message. For

example, the hands-together emoji (🙏🏻) lets the reader understand that the message conveys an apology.

Even though emojis can be used to show politeness, it needs to be used in moderation as it could also reduce

without using any words. Since emojis consist of small images of various emotions and objects, it can support

communication for people with low language proficiency. Emojis can also compensate for limited vocabulary

and grammar in language, making it easier for communication.

Emojis are used in various contexts, such as communication applications and social media posts. Emojis were

used as a form of expression during the old days as a self-constructed persona in the contemporary culture of

social media. Emojis has a deep historical connection to pictograms and character-based languages which

differ from Eastern and Western culture. The first most recognizable emoji was the smiley emoticon “:)”,

which uses various combinations of punctuations, such as parenthesis, colon, semicolon and hyphen. This

combination of emoticons was first used in 1881 in the British humour magazine Puck and continued to be

used for the next 100 years in printed materials. While Western emoticons were based on typography, Eastern

representation behind the image. This helps humans understand their psychological function of representation,

creating their perception of the world (Bischoff and Palea, 2019). In 2024, there are 3,790 emojis serving

various psychological and linguistic functions in the emoji dictionary website Emoji Counts, that can be used

for everyday use in communication applications (Durscheid and Meletis, 2019). These emojis represent human

negative connotations, demonstrating their usage in daily text communication. Emojis affect the message’s

valence (the emotional quality) and the interlocutor receiving the message. Some emojis might not be suitable

for professional conversations and might be perceived as incompetent in professional communication. For

example, a kissy face emoji might be ideal for romantic and intimate relationships rather than being used in a

workplace email. It can also impact messages addressing conflicts in serious situations and is usually

People of all ages use emojis in their daily conversations, but the factors that influence the usage of emojis are

age, identity, social class, and the level of closeness with the recipient. Younger generations use a wide variety

of emojis and stickers to enrich their conversation (Wu et al., 2024). Research shows that the younger

generation uses more emojis than other ages due to their ability to express their feelings more eloquently.

People tend to use emojis when they are feeling relaxed and happy rather than when they are angry or

embarrassed. Positive emojis are also used more in conversations than negative emojis or in formal situations

(Wu et al., 2024). Different platforms of online communication offer a variety of emojis and stickers, which

can cause confusion in understanding and perceiving the context of the conversation (Chiang, Gomez-Zara,

2024).

Meanwhile, Alburaidi (2023) investigated the perceptions of emojis among a regional group in Saudi Arabia,

specifically the Qassimi people. The users’ gender was perceived to influence the use of emojis in which there

were significant differences in their usage of emojis. In the general Malaysia context, Paiz (2020) also studied

no factual basis of the connection between gender and emoji usage.

It can be concluded from the above studies that there was a general relationship between gender and emoji

usage, but it was done in the context of general users with no categorical focus on student users of emojis. In

in Portugal and Saudi Arabia. This present study sought to categorically address the concern in the local

intelligence, and other relevant constructs differ in terms of their attitude towards emojis in text messaging.

between emotional intelligence and the usage of emojis among undergraduate students. The following research

questions have been constructed as follows:

1. Does students’ gender show differences in their overall perceptions of using emojis in their text

messaging style?

sender. Depending on the context of the conversation, emojis play a crucial role in determining the feelings of

the sender. Several theories are related to this research involving human perception, and the feelings created

from the use of emojis in text messaging. These theories reflect how humans perceive something as positive

and negative and whether it can influence their attitude into doing or understanding the message. One of the

theories related to the present research is Emotional Valence Theory.

According to emotional valence theory, emotional stimuli surround our daily social interactions every day.

Valence refers to the positive or negative emotional stimulus contained in information (Kauschke, Bahn,

Vesker and Schwarzer, 2019). Upon the receipt of information, humans will form their perceptions by

understanding through valency reflected in the message. Valency embedded in information is important as

Kauschke, Bahn, Vesker and Schwarzer, 2019). The reason is that emotionally loaded information can affect

human cognition to do good decision-making, good perception of surroundings and great human interaction

(Suhaimi, Mountstephens & Teo, 2020), which highlights emotional intelligence in humans.

Since emojis represent emotions, it acts as a visual marker of emotions in online conversations and readers can

determine whether the emoji used can be categorized as a positive valence or a negative valence, hence the

reason this theory is chosen for this paper. For example, emojis like 😂, 😊 and 🤩 can be perceived as a

positive valence, meanwhile emojis like 😡, 😒 and 😔 can be perceived as a negative valence. Even though

some emojis can be straightforward, a few emojis can give ambiguous meaning depending on the relationship

closeness with the receiver. This can cause confusion and miscommunication when using emojis. For example,

younger generations like to use the crying emoji (😭) as a reaction of laughing rather than crying, which

These emojis sometimes do not literally reflect the way the truth is shown in real life, rather, it is the way of

the speaker’s emotional state (Maier, 2022). Therefore, emojis are not understood literally upon first glance; it

is highly dependent on the feelings that are attached to the message and the emoji itself to piece together the

underlying meaning of the message.

proven that positive verbal stimuli are much easier to remember than negative stimuli (Unkelbach et al., 2008;

Sylvester et al., 2016 as cited by Kauschke et al., 2019). It is a similar case for facial expressions, where people

have better perceptions of positive facial expressions as these are easily recognisable and distinct than negative

expressions (Leppänen and Hietanen, 2004; Nummenmaa and Calvo, 2015 as cited by Kauschke et al., 2019).

for the receivers to remember the message compared to negative emojis in online conversations.

when speaking to people. Men are more used to using cynical emojis and jokes in conversations, meanwhile

women are inclined to show warmth and love in conversations (Wolf, 2000; Huffaker and Calvert, 2005 as

cited by Helvira et al., 2024). According to Tannen, 1990 as cited by Helvira et al. (2024), historically, men

and women have different communication styles, where males would use language that focuses on dominance

in conversation while women use more empathetic and cooperative language. Despite the gender stereotypes

implied in these emojis, there are also studies about emojis which are not related to gender. In certain online

communication domains, men would use the same type of emojis used by females, which shows that emojis

are not solely determined by the users’ gender.