Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Paper 3
Paper 3
Taylor Evans
Psych 440
23 October 2019
Paper 3: Prompt 1
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
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
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
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
References
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.
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.