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A sample of 641 participants were presented with four decision-making tasks during the first stages of the COVID-19 lockdown in Spain: The dictator game, framing problems, utilitarian/deontological and altruistic/egoistic moral dilemmas. Participants also completed questionnaires on mental health status and experiences related to the COVID-19 pandemic. We used boosted regression trees (an advanced form of regression analysis based on machine learning) to model relationships between responses to the questionnaires and decision-making tasks. Results showed that the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic predicted participants' responses to the framing problems and utilitarian/deontological and altruistic/egoistic moral dilemmas (but not to the dictator game). More concretely, the more psychological impact participants suffered, the more they were willing to choose the safest response in the framing problems, and the more deontological/altruistic were their responses to moral dilemmas. These results suggest that the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic might prompt automatic processes.

Emoji are vastly becoming an integral part of everyday communication, yet little is understood about the extent to which these are processed emotionally. Previous research shows that there is a processing advantage for emotionally-valenced words over neutral ones, therefore if emoji are indeed emotional, one could expect an equivalent processing advantage. In the Pilot Study, participants (N = 44) completed a lexical decision task to explore accuracy and response latency of word, face and emoji stimuli. This stimuli varied in emotional valence (positive vs. neutral). Main effects were found for stimuli type and valence on both accuracy and latency, although the interaction for accuracy was not significant. That is, there were processing advantages of positively-valenced stimuli over neutral ones, across all stimuli types. Also, faces and emoji were processed significantly more quickly than words, and latencies between face and emoji stimuli, irrespective of valence were largely equivalent. The Main Study recruited 33 participants to undertake a modified and extended version of the lexical decision task, which included three valence conditions (positive, negative and neutral) per stimuli type. Although no main effects were found for accuracy, there was a significant main effect found for stimuli but not for valence on latency. Namely, that word stimuli irrespective of valence were processed significantly more slowly than face or emoji stimuli. There was not a significant interaction between stimuli and valence, however. Therefore, overall although there was partial support for a processing advantage of emoji stimuli, this was not replicated across the studies reported here, suggesting additional work may be needed to corroborate further evidence. • Some evidence of a processing advantage of positively-valenced stimuli over neutral ones. • Emoji may be processed emotionally to some extent. • Emoji may be processed in an equivalent way as face stimuli. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite emoji often being assumed to be a form of emotional communication, the emotional affordances of these are not yet fully established. The current study employed the Emoji Spatial Stroop Task to explore whether spatial iconicity affects semantic-relatedness judgments relating to emoji stimuli. Namely, emoji stimuli were displayed in various vertical positions and valence perceptions were measured. A 3 (emoji valence; positive, negative, neutral) x 3 (vertical position; upper, lower, central) within-participants design was used to determine the impacts on valence perceptions. Valence perceptions were obtained from ratings on how positive/negative participants perceived stimuli to be on an 11-point Likert scale (−5 negative, 0 neutral and +5 positive). Findings from 157 participants revealed that, after controlling for current mood, both emoji valence and their vertical positioning impacted significantly on valence ratings. The valence × positioning interaction effect was also significant, highlighting a congruence effect whereby positive emoji in higher vertical space were rated significantly more positively than when in central or lower space, and negative emoji were rated significantly more negatively when displayed in lower vertical space compared to central or upper space. These congruence effects suggest we may embody emoji as symbolic objects to represent abstract emotional concepts. • Emoji Spatial Stroop Task measures spatial iconicity on semantic-related judgments. • Congruency effect occurred for positive emoji in upper vertical space. • Congruency effect occurred for negative emoji in lower vertical space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]