People Who Use Emojis Have More Sex... Or Do They? 🍑🍆💦

I recently came across a study that suggested those who used more emojis in CMC (that being Computer-Mediated Communication) were more likely to succeed in doing the sexy things. So. Being both 1) a person who has some (?) expertise on the *subject and 2) someone who enjoys the sexy things, I figured it'd be interesting to delve deeper.

If you're unfamiliar with the recent study that came from the Kinsey Institute - feel free to familiarise yourself with the findings by looking here - or checking out the UNILAD article (where I first encountered it).

Essentially, though, it was noted that those who used more emojis within CMC were found to report having more sexual relations than those who did not use emojis. Despite it being only a correlational result (and therefore we cannot define a causative link) - how can we perhaps explain why this occurs? Here's what the researchers said:

"According to social penetration theory [23], as relationships advance, interpersonal communication moves from more superficial to more intimate levels. This development occurs primarily through self-disclosure: partners advance to deeper levels of intimacy as they engage in more affective communication with their partner. Engaging in affective self-disclosure may be more challenging through CMC, thus preventing partners from successfully developing shared understanding and advancing to higher levels of intimacy. However, emojis may help supply the socio-emotional affective components of interpersonal communication into CMC, thereby facilitating intimacy and relationship development." Gesselman AN, Ta VP, Garcia JR (2019)

First off, I love that it has the word penetration in there. Secondly - aside from my own childish snickers - can we really assume that a littering of emojis in our computer-mediated communications will actually boost our sexual prowess?

Is it because those who use such devices are more confident? More empathetic in their approach? If it's assumed to be an effective use of facilitating intimacy then perhaps those people are just more aware of their potential partners/hook-ups in general?

Many questions stem from the study for me - just what emojis/emoticons are used? Where are they situated within the message - is there but a scattering of hopeful emojis or is there something more going on with the placement?

Are we seeing a correlation between what is perceived as being a 'sexual' emoji and more sexual encounters, or is it simply  that adding a few smiley faces in there means we are perceived as being more friendly and approachable? It would certainly be revealing to study the exact emojis used and whether this can explain any more.

Also, given that one participant was excluded from the data after identifying as neither male nor female - just how can we bring this into new research? I am certainly intrigued by how this study and the findings can be expanded upon.

Anyway, as noted in the study in their conclusion:  

"Emojis appear to be an important aspect of social behavior in today’s digital world that can be used strategically as affective signals, particularly in the domain of human courtship."

Over and out. 🍆🍆🍆 
           


*See my previous work on SWB Texts - it was interesting to note that the majority were white/caucasian within these interactions: Most (86.8%) identified as straight/heterosexual, 9.6% as gay or lesbian, and 3.5% as bisexual. Most (62.2%) identified as White/Caucasian, 18.8% Black/African-American, 15.0% Hispanic/Latino, 5.9% Asian, 2.0% North American Indian/Alaskan Native/Pacific Islander, and 3.3% identified as “other.” 

Reference: Gesselman AN, Ta VP, Garcia JR (2019) Worth a thousand interpersonal words: Emoji as affective signals for relationship-oriented digital communication. PLoS ONE 14(8): e0221297. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0221297