Using emojis can be an effective way to communicate and gives insight into contemporary human behaviours, a new international research showed.

"Contemporary behaviours such as emojis can be considered true forms of emotion on a neurological and interpersonal level," according to the research project released Wednesday by the Australian Catholic University and Britain's Edge Hill University.

"Using emojis and emoticons help add emotional depth to our written communication, provides context in the same way body language does in face-to-face interactions, but it can also give us insight into contemporary human behaviour."

The research found personality traits such as extraversion and openness to experience, could be calculated with reasonable accuracy, by assessing an individual's use of emojis.

"Online data can be utilised to investigate how personality is communicated online and whether virtual portrayals of emotion impact how the user is viewed by others," researchers said.

Although the use of emojis has increased rapidly, there are still many circumstances where people opt to avoid revealing their emotions.

"Online expression of emotion is also dependent on who we talking to, as emoji usage is much higher in social media than in a more formal email setting," researchers said.

source: Xinhua