Eschew emojis if you want to connect‚ say boffins

Think twice before inserting emojis into business e-mails.

Smiley faces and similar emoticons could create an impression of incompetence and reduce information-sharing in work e-mails‚ a study with some 550 participants from 29 countries found.

“In initial interactions‚ it is better to avoid using smileys‚ regardless of age or gender‚” said lead author Ella Glikson‚ from the department of management at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

“Our findings provide first-time evidence that‚ contrary to actual smiles‚ smileys do not increase perceptions of warmth and actually decrease perceptions of competence.”

Participants in one experiment had to read a work-related e-mail from a stranger and evaluate the competence and warmth of that person. The messages were similar but some had smileys and others not.

Unlike face-to-face smiles‚ the e-mail smileys had no benefit and “had a negative effect on the perception of competence”‚ the researchers found. The readers also responded in more detail with content-related information to the e-mails without smiles.

In a second experiment‚ a smiling photograph accompanying the sender’s e-mail had a more competent and friendly impact than a neutral photograph.

Participants were more likely to assume that women would send e-mails with smileys‚ if the gender of the sender was unknown.

Glikson said: “People tend to assume that a smiley is a virtual smile‚ but the findings of this study show that in the case of the workplace‚ at least as far as initial ‘encounters’ are concerned‚ this is incorrect.

“For now‚ at least‚ a smiley can only replace a smile when you already know the other person.”

The latest research‚ in collaboration with the universities of Haifa and Amsterdam‚ was published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

The use of emoticons on phones is common and new emojis are being rolled out this month‚ including a ginger head‚ a bald head and a silver fox.

More than 1‚600 emojis have been approved by the controlling body‚ Unicode Consortium‚ and the selfie emoji made it onto the roster when 72 new ones were released in June.

The new movie Emoji — an animated comedy starring emojis inside a smartphone — has won few fans‚ however. Critics and the public alike have trashed it on the movie site Rotten Tomatoes.