A new University of Ottawa study warns that emoji use in professional communication can undermine how senders are perceived. Messages that omit emojis were rated as the most effective for reinforcing competence and professionalism. In tests with 243 adult volunteers who evaluated hypothetical instant messages, participants consistently judged text-only messages higher in competence and appropriateness than those containing emojis. This pattern held across a range of scenarios. The findings emphasize that emojis are not neutral additions and carry social signals that can shift judgments of competence, appropriateness, and credibility.
Positive emojis sometimes helped when paired with neutral or congruent content. They added no extra benefit to messages already framed positively. The study indicates diminishing returns when enthusiasm is already clear in the text, according to Gizmodo.
Attempts to soften negative messages backfire
Attempts to soften negative messages with emojis generally backfire. Positive emojis attached to bad news or critical feedback were often read as insincere or dishonest, generating distrust that could affect future interactions. Incongruent combinations, such as a smiling face with a negative message, were especially counterproductive. The mismatch heightened perceptions of inauthenticity and lowered the sender’s credibility.
The reverse pattern was similarly problematic. A negative or angry emoji paired with a positive or neutral statement created a contradiction that reduced confidence in the sender. More broadly, the study concluded the real risk lies not in the absence of emojis but in their misuse. An icon’s social signal can be misinterpreted and damage impressions of professionalism and competence.
Across conditions, negative emojis emerged as especially harmful for workplace communication. Participants consistently judged negative emojis as inappropriate. Their presence diminished perceptions of competence regardless of the content of the accompanying message. Even when the written text was rational or neutral, adding an angry face led to a clear drop in how competent the sender was perceived to be. Negative emojis were a risky choice in professional contexts and tended to produce low overall judgments of competence.
An upbeat emoji did not make the message seem more appropriate or the sender more competent, suggesting that positivity in text alone is sufficient. Consequently, routine professional updates, sensitive topics, and negative feedback are safer without emojis, while a modest benefit may exist for neutral updates that could be warmed slightly by a well-matched positive icon, according to Scienmag.
Researchers also detected gendered dynamics in how emoji-laden messages were judged. Female participants evaluated negative messages with emojis from other women more severely than similar messages from men. The team linked this pattern to the “double bind” that women can face around emotional expression at work, where deviations from expected norms - such as appearing too harsh or too emotional - are penalized more strongly. In this context, the addition of an emoji to a negative message from a woman could be interpreted as either softening inappropriately or signaling mixed intent, compounding negative judgments. Perceptions of appropriateness and competence are filtered through expectations about who is speaking and how they “should” express emotion in professional settings.
The study’s authors acknowledged key limitations. The experiment used simulated instant messages rather than real workplace exchanges and relied on a restricted set of emojis: a positive “grinning face” and a negative “angry face.” Those choices allowed the researchers to isolate effects with precision, but they may not fully capture the complexity of real-world digital communication, where context, relationships, and a wider palette of emojis shape interpretation. Even so, the core results held consistently.