Cross-cultural investigation of Smileys

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Karim N'Diaye

Wednesday, 07 January 2009

Blog Karim's blog

This post, written by Karim N'Diaye, was first published in 2006 on the Alphapsy blog. I republish it here because it is relevant to the discussion I was having with Helen de Cruz, on the cultural specificity of cartoon faces. Below the posts are some comments posted on the Alphapsy blog in 2006 - Olivier

As you might have noticed, japanese emoticons and american ones differ (see illustration below). An empirical study by psychologists from these two countries suggests that people from the two cultures differ in the way they perceive emotions  as expressed on faces: while easterners focus on eyes, westerners look at the mouth. Although weak, this difference might prove sufficent to have lead each culture in using different styles of emoticons, Masaki Yuki and his colleagues argue.