How Can Chatbots Comfort Humans? Exploring the Effects of Emoji and Identity Cues in Emotional Support

Based on the Computers Are Social Actors (CASA) paradigm, this study examines how the identity cues (human vs. chatbot) and the use of emoji influence the effectiveness of chatbots in providing emotional support in the context of Hong Kong. Through a 2 x 2 online experiment with 494 valid participants, the results showed that the interaction between emoji use and identity cues significantly affected the social presence. Only in the condition of human identity cues, using emojis in the message could significantly increase social presence, which enhanced participants’ perceived warmth and perceived competence regarding the communication partner. Moreover, these social perceptions could further increase perceived emotional support when human identity cues were present. Theoretically, this study extends the CASA paradigm into the domain of supportive communication by identifying a perception-cognition-behavior pathway driven by human-like social cues. Practically, it highlights the context-dependent nature of multiple social cues in effective human-computer interaction, offering insights for culturally adaptive chatbot design.