This could wipe the smiley off your face...

IN A world where face-toface conversations are becoming increasingly rare, it may be tempting to try to soften the blow of a harsh message or a difficult request with a “smiley”.

However, the digital image of a smiling face can have the opposite effect to an actual smile for the person on the receiving end, researchers have found.

Emoji are used six billion times a day and have been described as the fastestgrowing language in history.

Now it seems the sender could be making themselves seem less competent. Academics warned that peppering an email with emojis could harm your job prospects by making colleagues less likely to share information with you.

The effect can be so damaging that people are advised to avoid them at work altogether.

Dr Ella Glikson, an expert in business and management at Ben-gurion University of the Negev in Israel, said: “Our findings provide evidence that – contrary to actual smiles – smileys do not increase perceptions of warmth and actually decrease perceptions of competence.”

The study, published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, was based on a series of experiments involving 549 people from 29 different countries.

A27-year-old has just set up as an emoji consultant, we report. His task is to advise businesses on the use of those little coloured pictures – of someone crying with laughter or of a thumbs-up – in electronic communications. The danger of using an emoji (a Japanese term meaning “picture-character”) is not just of sending a picture of some vegetable that has acquired an indecent double meaning. The wider problem is of appearing insensitive or plain stupid by pinging off an emoji when subtler registers of language are needed. The Emoji Movie failed (even with Patrick Stewart voicing an emoji of a pile of ordure) because of the limits of this voguish argot. Using emojis alone, try apologising for accidentally squashing a guinea-pig belonging to a neighbour’s child. It can be done – but not successfully.