If you feel like you have stronger connections with your friends who use emojis a lot, you’re not imagining it. A new study has found that using emojis in text messages can make relationships feel more meaningful.
Conducted by Eun Huh, a researcher in communication studies at the University of Texas at Austin, the study saw 260 adults aged 23-67 read two sets of 15 text message exchanges. The exchanges were nearly identical, except one set used emojis while the other did not. Participants were asked to think of themselves as the sender and rate how much they agreed or disagreed with statements designed to determine how they felt about the other person in the texts.
The results suggest that the participants felt that their texting partner was more responsive when the conversation used emojis. According to Huh, this is important because how we perceive responsiveness in a relationship affects our feelings of closeness and satisfaction with said relationship. When we feel that people are more responsive to us, it makes us believe that we have a better relationship with them.
