Male Vs. Female Emotional Expression in Text Messaging

This study focused on gender differences in emotional expression in text messaging. It sought to discover whether men or women use more emotionally expressive tools and words in texts and whether the gender of the person receiving the message affects a person’s emotional expression when creating text messages. Fifty female and fifty male college students completed a two-part study in which they created text messages displaying particular emotions according to given scenarios. The participants were instructed to create each message as if they were texting a member of the same sex, and then a member of the opposite sex. A total of 1,400 text messages were analyzed to find that the data supported the hypothesis that gender differences in emotional expression in face-to-face communication are also present in computer-mediated communication because the average number and type of tools used to express each emotion varied according to the sex of the participant and the sex of his/her text message recipient