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Article published In: Interaction Studies
Vol. 24:3 (2023) ► pp.422–436

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Texting!!!

Attributions of gender and friendliness to texters who use exclamation marks

ORCiD logo with link | University of British Columbia
 | University of Alberta
 | University of Alberta
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with University of British Columbia.

Published online: 15 February 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/is.22054.nic
Abstract
Previous research shows that females use more exclamation marks than males, often to establish rapport. The purpose of the present studies was to test whether people associate texters’ use of exclamation marks with friendliness and femaleness. If this association is due to normative expectations, we hypothesized that females would appear less friendly if they did not use an exclamation mark in texting. In Study 1, participants rated a texter using an exclamation mark to be highly female and highly friendly. The gender results disappeared when friendliness was controlled for. In Study 2, we tested whether friendliness ratings decreased if texters violated gender-associated punctuation. Participants rated a texter with a gendered name on friendliness. Regardless of gender, participants inferred greater friendliness to texters using an exclamation mark. That is, there was no evidence of a cost for violating this gender expectation. We conclude that people predict that a texter using an exclamation mark is likely to be female, but do not penalize females for not using an exclamation mark.
Article outline
  • Study 1
    • Method
      • Materials
      • Procedure
    • Results
    • Discussion of Study 1
  • Study 2
    • Method
      • Materials
      • Procedure
    • Results
    • Discussion of Study 2
  • General discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
References (32)
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Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Grønning, A.
2025. Language of Emoticons in the Workplace. In Reference Module in Social Sciences, DOI logo

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