People who use a shit-ton of emojis are nicer, according to new study ? ? ?

If you’re an emoji addict, someone has called you out for it.

You have one next to every important person’s name on your phone, you use them at the beginning and end of texts, and sometimes you skip the words all together.

But according to this new study by Linda Kaye, Stephanie Malone and Helen Wall, published in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, that’s actually a good thing.

Similarly to people who express themselves in conversation, when really listening to what someone is saying, they argue that the use of emojis mirrors this.

To use an emoji, especially one with a facial expression, shows you’re listening to and engaging with the person you’re texting.

For a long time, emotion was missing from text. You couldn’t tell if someone was being sarcastic or serious — if when they said ‘lol’ they were actually laughing out loud, or staring at their screen with a blank expression. Emojis have allowed us to transcend all of that.

“It says something about how we’re understanding each other and how we’re likely to interact with people,” Kaye told CNN.

So the next time someone calls you out for your emoji use, you can ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  shrug it off ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  knowing that you’re a really, really nice person.