Casey Kidman, Snow College
Psychology
Many people these days are using emoticons in electronic communication. Our topic of research is how people interpret and define these emoticons. This research will include both high school and college students as well as other individuals. We will have students fill out a survey in which they view an emoticon and then write a one-word or brief description of it. We also will evaluate the false consensus effect by asking them on the survey what percentage of people they believe would agree with the way they define the emoticon. Research thus far has not looked into how emoticons are defined, while there is research on how often they are used and what gender uses them more frequently. There are holes in the current research and we are laying the ground work in answering the question of if and how emoticons are universally defined. We expect the very basic emoticons such as “:)” and “:(“ to be generally defined the same; however, as emoticons get more complex we believe the definitions will vary significantly.