Do Emojis Reduce Hostile Attribution in Online Communication? An ERP Study with Chinese University Students

Abstract

The perception of hostility in online contexts is closely associated with the occurrence of online aggression. Compared to traditional methods that rely on self-report or behavioral analysis, ERP allows for real-time, objective capture of neural responses to emotional stimuli, making it especially suited to reveal the immediate processing of hostility expectation violations. By creating distinct social contexts, we examined participants’ brain responses to violations of hostility expectations in text-based communications, both with and without emojis. The results indicated that in the absence of emojis, violations of hostility expectations triggered a significant negative deflection in the N400 waveform, reflecting a heightened neural response to perceived hostility. In contrast, when emojis were present, this negative neural response was substantially reduced, suggesting that emojis play a key role in mitigating hostile attributions and fostering positive social interactions. These findings not only highlight the important function of emojis in online communication from a neuroscience perspective, demonstrating their ability to effectively reduce hostility attribution and potential conflicts in digital interactions, but also provide new empirical evidence for understanding the emotional regulation mechanisms of nonverbal cues in digital environments and improving the quality of online interactions.