A Study of Emotional Communication of Emoticon Based on Russell’s Circumplex Model of Affect

With the rapid spread of the Internet, there are more and more people being fond of using emoticons to convey emotions on the Internet. However, due to the high abstraction of real things and expressions and the arbitrariness in the production of emoticons, many misunderstandings have happened. At the same time, more and more emoticons emerge in endlessly, people even do not know how to choose and use appropriate emoticons, which seriously affects the efficiency and the experience. This research tried to purpose an approach to verify and optimize the effectiveness of emoticons in emotional communication based on Russell’s Circumplex Model of Affect. This research used emoticons in Wechat, which is the most widely used application in China, as an example to construct a quantitative coordinates of emotional cognition system based on Russell’s Circumplex Model of Affect, through variable control, perceptual map, cluster analysis and statistical data analysis to verify and improve the present emoticons. The results of verification experiment indicated that it is practical and effective for emoticons classify and use. On the basis of these results, then we can tag the emoticons more effectively and apply it to the recommendation system to further improve the experience and efficiency in the process of using the emoticons. It is foreseeable that the theory of this research can be applied to other things related to emotional communication. Meanwhile, the research methods and results not only provide a new way of thinking for the application of Russell’s Circumplex Model of Affect in the Internet era, but also can be applied to psychology, sociology re-search and other specific areas, playing a guiding and testing role.