"It could be due to texting's simplicity and briefer communication, which removes some of the pressures that are inherent in other types of non-face-to-face communication, like email or blogs," Kortum said in a statement.
The study also confirms previous research that women are more emotionally expressive in nonverbal communication.
Seventy-four different emoticons were used, but the top three emoticons - happy, sad and very happy - made up 70 per cent of the total emoticons sent by the study participants.
The study was published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior.
