The effect of emoticons in simplex and complex task-oriented communication: An empirical study of instant messaging

Many studies have shed light on general computer-mediated communication, instant messaging (IM), and emotion or emoticons, but little is known specifically about the impacts of emoticons in task-oriented IM communication in the workplace. Therefore, the current study addresses this issue by conducting an exploratory experiment to (1) categorize workplace IM messages into coherent groups, (2) identify the most commonly used emoticons (emblems) for expressing positive, negative, and neutral emotions in the case company, (3) test the differences in the emotional effects of the received text messages with and without emoticons on the reader/s, and (4) examine the intention to use emoticons in IM in the workplace. The results showed that (1) negative emoticons could cause a negative effect in both simplex and complex task-oriented communication, (2) positive emoticons only created a positive effect in complex communication and for female employees in simplex communication, and (3) there is no significant difference between task-oriented messages with or without neutral emoticon. Furthermore, the intention of using emoticons was not statistically significant in terms of gender, but it has a higher tendency on female employees. The corresponding suggestions provided by this research may help increase our understanding on the effect of emoticon use in IM in the workplace.