Differences in Empathy According to Nonverbal Expression Elements of Emojis: Focusing on the Humanoid Emojis of KakaoTalk

Abstract

To identify the most effective type of emojis for inducing empathy, the nonverbal expression factors of emojis that generate empathy differences were categorized as body language types (the presence of movement and contextual information), emotion type (joy and sadness), and degree of bodily expression (upper body and whole body). After dividing the data into joyful and sad emotion groups, differences in empathy according to the body language types and degree of bodily expression of emojis were confirmed. As a result, in the sad emotions group, empathy was higher in the movement type and the type combining movement and contextual information than the static body language type and the contextual information type without movement. However, the difference in empathy according to the degree of body expression and the interaction effect between body language types and degree of body expression were not significant. On the other hand, in the joyful emotions group, neither the main effect nor the interaction effect was significant. These results indicate that the effective emoji types for inducing empathy are the upper body of the movement type and the upper body combined with movement and contextual information. These types are also considered to work more effectively when applied to emotions with low mirroring and emotion recognition rates, such as sad emotion.