Methods and systems may provide for receiving a message, determining a mood condition for the message, and generating a message notification icon based on the mood condition. In one example, the mood condition estimates one or more of a mood of the sender of the message and a mood impact of the message on a recipient of the message. Moreover, one or more additional messages may be received, wherein one or more additional mood conditions are determined for the additional messages, and the mood conditions are combined to form an aggregate mood condition. The message notification icon may be further generated based on the aggregate mood condition.