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Taylor Evans

Professor Tabitha Kirkland

Psych 440

23 October 2019

Paper 3: Prompt 1

Nonverbal communication is vital for conveying emotions. However, as the use of

electronic communication has increased, physical nonverbal communication has decreased.

Naturally, a communication which lacks face-to-face interaction would require a substitute. For

this purpose, the emoji was invented. Emojis are small images or icons used in text conversations

to express the emotions of the writer1, where the more commonly used emojis bear resemblance

to traditional facial expressions. However, facial expression differs depending on the culture, and

as a result, so does the use of emojis when communicating emotions.

Alongside the popularization of instant messaging, users have begun to rely on emojis to

convey their emotions, with this reliance beginning to show the unique differences of cultures.

However, before we can see how emoji-usage differs across cultures, first we must look at how

culture has impacted the way that we express emotions in our face. Facial expression of emotions

can vary by culture depending on the emotion. For instance, the “lajya” expression of biting

one’s tongue to depict shame and embarrassment is commonly used in Odisha but not in the

United States4. Furthermore, Americans are more likely to outwardly display negative emotions

whereas Japanese and Russians are more likely to soften their negative feelings with a slight

smile 5. Because of cultural differences in emotional expression such as these, it’s not surprising

that emojis, which are a way to express emotion, can vary in usage across cultures. One example
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of this is the slightly smiling emoji, which is used in America to convey positive, friendly

sentiments 7, but is used in China to convey distrust or disbelief 8.

Some emotional expressions, however, have been found to overlap in eastern and western

cultures, which corresponds to an overlapping in emoji usage. Research has found that eastern

and western cultures use similar emojis when expressing anger or happiness, but differ when

expressing surprise, disgust, sadness, and fear6. It’s possible that this is due to the freedom that

comes with using emojis to free label emotions; “free labeling” occurs when people are

presented with a photo (or in this case, an emoji) and are allowed to label the emotion portrayed

in the picture with any word, rather than if they were told to categorize it into a given list of

emotions3. In one study, when allowed to free label, participants were most accurate in guessing

the emotions “angry” and “happy” of the people in the photos than with the other four

“universal” emotional expressions set by Dr. Paul Eckman in 1984: surprise, disgust, sadness,

and fear3. This ability to better identify angry and happy emotional expressions provides a

potential reason why eastern and western cultures’ usage of emojis overlap when describing their

angry and happy emotions.

In conclusion, western and eastern cultures differ in some of their emotional expressions,

such as smiling as a sign of positivity in western cultures versus as a sign of distrust in eastern

cultures, but not in all of them. Consequently, since emojis are a form of emotional expression,

they are being used differently across cultures. However, research has found that cultures have a

commonality in their emoji usage when expressing angriness and happiness. This similarity is

supported by the study which found that “angry” and “happy” facial expressions are more easily

labeled by people, thus explaining why different cultures would use similar emojis to convey

these emotions. Understanding how a culture translates its emotional expression into the use of
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emojis provides insight into the culture as a whole, which we can hope will spread into a more

culturally appreciative world.

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References

1. "emoji." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, 2019. Web. 22 October 2019

2. Pardes, Arielle. “The Complete History of Emoji.” Wired. Conde Nast, February 7, 2019.

https://www.wired.com/story/guide-emoji/.

3. Shiota, M. N., & Kalat, J. W. (2018). Emotional expression in the face, posture, and

voice. Emotion (p. 126). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

4. Shiota, M. N., & Kalat, J. W. (2018). Emotional expression in the face, posture, and

voice. Emotion (p. 130). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

5. Shiota, M. N., & Kalat, J. W. (2018). Emotional expression in the face, posture, and

voice. Emotion (p. 132). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

6. Guntuku, Sharath Chandra, Mingyang Li, Louis Tay, and Lyle H. Ungar. “Studying

Cultural Differences in Emoji Usage across the East and the West,” 2019.

7. “ Slightly Smiling Face Emoji.” Emoji, https://emojipedia.org/slightly-smiling-

face/#targetText=

8. “Why Emoji Mean Different Things in Different Cultures - BBC Future.” BBC News,

BBC, https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20181211-why-emoji-mean-different-

things-in-different-cultures?ocid=ww.social.link.twitter.