Women are twice as likely as men to use emoticons in text
messages, according to a new study from Rice University.
Emoticons are graphic symbols that use punctuation marks and
letters to represent facial expressions to convey a person’s mood, help provide
context to a person’s textual communication and clarify a message that could
otherwise possibly be misconstrued.
The study, “A Longitudinal Study of Emoticon Use in Text
Messaging from Smartphones,” used smartphone data from men and women over six
months and aggregated 124,000 text messages. The participants were given free
iPhones to use for the test period but didn’t know what researchers were
investigating.