The Empathy Effect by Helen Riess

Author:Helen Riess
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Sounds True

A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Emotions

We need new ways to interpret emotion in the age of sound bites. Enter the hieroglyphics of yellow smiles, smirks, and frowns.

The use of emojis in digital communication to depict emotional empathy developed surprisingly quickly after text messaging began to take off. At the start of the text revolution, people used emoticons to represent basic feelings and intentions. This is when you type a colon, then a dash, then a parenthesis to represent a smiley face. Then in 1999, Shigetaka Kurita, a Japanese economist, created the first emoji as part of a team that set out to revolutionize Japan’s means of communication. The traditional way people in Japan speak to one another in person and through handwritten letters is traditionally lengthy, full of praise and respect, and laden with good will. Kurita realized that keyboard messages stripped people of the ability to express themselves in ways they were accustomed to, leading to miscommunication and widespread communication breakdowns.

It’s precisely because humans rely on the seven keys of empathy that, without evidence of eye contact and facial expressions, postures, or tone of voice and murmurs, we soon find ourselves lost. Without emojis to intuit emotional context, we risked a style of communication that was devoid of empathy. Emojis function as analogs to tone of voice and body language. Of the 3.2 billion people in the world who now have regular internet access, studies show that 92 percent regularly use emojis. Regardless of native tongue, emojis appear to provide universal clues to emotion and intent.

It’s fortunate we have emojis to guide us through the potential emotional minefields that digital communication has created. Perhaps we’d be lost without them. We can’t communicate without them, but do they go far enough? Are they still creating ambiguity when someone needs you to relate? When you look at most people’s text chains, emails, and social media posts, they’re full of smiley faces and looks of surprise. The repertoire quickly moves beyond facial expressions to thumbs-up, hearts, and “like” buttons that symbolize even greater nuance of thought and feeling. Now we have everything from unicorns to hashtags to short moving clips known as gifs to help us reintroduce some of the intended emotions back into digital messaging.

There aren’t enough data at this point in time to be certain, but we can surmise that seeing a bright yellow smiley face probably activates neural circuits for happiness and likely gets your brain to light up in a similar way as when you see an actual happy face in front of you. But emojis aren’t a substitute for true empathy. Is a sad face really the appropriate response to a breakup? A post about a death in the family? While they do seem to convey some of the emotional intent and provide some clarity of meaning, emojis are not perfect analogs to emotions.

I see, for example, a confusing array of reactions to things like social media posts. Why did five people click the heart button

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