Cultural Differences in Emoticon Perception: Japanese See the Eyes and Dutch the Mouth of Emoticons

Abstract

This study investigated cultural differences in the perception of emoticons between Japanese and Dutch participants. We manipulated the eyes and mouth of emoticons independently and asked participants to evaluate the emotion of each emoticon. The results show that Japanese participants tended to focus on the emotion expressed with the eyes while Dutch participants put weight on the shape of the mouth when evaluating emoticons. This tendency is consistent with a previous cross-cultural study comparing people from Japan and the United States (Yuki et al., 2007).