If you use emoticons in large quantities, you may hide the dark features of personalities that may indicate your internal inclinations. This is claimed by psychologists from Oklahoma State University who found that frequent use of emoticons is associated with negative properties such as narcissism, and even psychopathy.
“The use of emoticons may be related to the strategy of manipulating the perception of others and trying to create a positive impression of yourself,” The authors claim. In the study, they examined how the use of emoticons is related to personality – namely three unwanted personality traits known as a dark triad. These include psychopathy, narcissism and machiavelism, which is defined as a willingness to manipulate others to enforce their own interests.
The authors found that u Men who used all types of emoticons more often have been proven by a higher level of narcissismthat is defined as an unreasonably high perception of one’s own importance. There was also a higher level of machiavelism in men associated with the more frequent use of positive emoticons, negative emoticons, emoticons in answers to messages on social networks and text messages.
In women, a higher level of narcissism was associated with more frequent use of positive emoticons, negative emoticons, emoticons in new social networks and responses to social networks. In both men and women, a higher level of extroversion was associated with more frequent use of positive emoticons, and in men, extroversion was also associated with more frequent use of emoticons in text messages.
In women there was a higher level of openness associated with more frequent use of emoticons in new social posts, in response to posts and text messages. In men there was a higher level of neurotism associated with more frequent use of negative emoticons and more frequent use of emoticons in response to social network messages.
“For future research in this area, it would be essential to find out how different generations (with gender determination for each generation) They understand, perceive and use emoticons in their lives. This clarification with regard to the generation and age in the use of emoticons would improve the meanings of emoticons for a wide population, ”as the authors showed.
