Scientists Prove Emoticons Are Not Universally Understood (qz.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: The most recent such study, published Oct. 24 in the Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, examined how emotions expressed in symbols and pictures are understood in three nations with varying degrees of internet connectivity and access: Japan, Cameroon, and Tanzania. Psychologists from the University of Tokyo tested subjects on how well they recognized emotions in emoticons and photographs. Participants across cultures could read emotion accurately in images of real people regardless of race -- but symbolic tech expression was not universally comprehensible. The study subjects were shown photographs of happy, neutral, and sad Caucasians, Asians, and Africans and told to describe the emotions expressed in the images. Generally, participants accurately assessed the feelings expressed across the board. The researchers noted one difference: African participants tended to confuse Asian neutral and sad faces, "perhaps due to lack of exposure to the out-group [Asian] faces," they suggest.

When it came to symbols, however, the scientists found clear cultural differences in emotion recognition. Subjects from all three countries were given a tablet, on which they were asked to scroll through a series of emoticons. They were shown emoticons in the Japanese style, with happiness, sadness, and neutrality expressed in the eyes; in a western style with emotion expressed in the mouth; and "smiley face" emoticons (pictured above). The Japanese subjects fluently read emotion in emoticons, whereas subjects from Cameroon and Tanzania found emoticons utterly mystifying at similar rates. This was true both for urban and rural dwellers in both African nations. The researchers believe this is due to the varying levels of internet exposure in the three countries.

Comments

My favorite emoticon

[tgibson]

is the pile of smiling pudding. Yum!

Re:My favorite emoticon

[turp182]

For Christmas last year my mom bought two bean bags in the shape of what she thought was chocolate cake, for my 7 year old twins. Full size bean bags, not a little pillow.

When my kids opened them (from large trash bags), they freaked out; they had huge poop emojis!!! It was their favorite gift of the season.

My mother was initially mortified ("I gave them big pieces of shit?"), then reluctantly positive (it's hard to ignore the happiness the kids were having), and now laughs about it. I just laughed my ass off because it was awesome. They still love to jump onto the poop from the bunk bed.

Anyway, pretty dumb post for Slashdot, but it brought back that memory which was fun. I don't think Slashdot readers use emojis much, I sent my first one just recently, a camp fire (while I was camping).

We needed a study for this?

[jrumney]

Graphical symbols invented by Japanese in the context of Japanese culture are only truly understood by Japanese. Who'd have guessed?

Can I have my college tuition fees back now? I think I can put it to better use in my bathroom.

Re:We needed a study for this?

[Calydor]

They don't even seem to check if people AGREE on the meanings of the emojis, as far as I can tell.

In my country we have a radio show on Saturday morning where people can write or call in with various dilemmas they face in their lives to get a small group of semi-famous people (authors, actors, politicians etc.) to brainstorm the problem and perhaps give a new point of view.

A couple of weeks ago, one of these dilemmas related to the asker's wife receiving a text message from her massage therapist about having found an open time slot for an emergency session - I don't remember why, it's not important to the story.

The therapist ended this text message with a kissing smiley, and apparently this was some massive faux pas in the eyes of both husband and wife. The panel of the day were rather split on how serious such a smiley was, exactly what it would symbolize in the context, and even whether it had been created as an auto-correct from a different intended smiley.

And we want to use emojis as if they have some kind of set-in-stone meaning? Not happening.

They are confusing in America too

[craXORjack]

You don't have to go to other countries to check these results. I have gotten the most confusing emoticons while texting with my girlfriend and when I have asked her what they mean it turns out they aren't even the same as what she is seeing. I'll ask 'what is this one with the frowny face winking at me and tears flying out to the sides?' and she'll say 'what?! That isn't what it looks like.' Being an Android guy dating an iPhone girl is downright confusing.

Re:Thank you...

[DontBeAMoran]

Emoticons are made from regular characters, such as :p and ;)

Emojis are unicode characters of their own, represented by a dedicated graphic for each character.

I just read them all as, "blob"

[jabberw0k]

Me: "Why did you send me a message that says, blob blob blob blob blob?"

A potential long-term issue

[Pollux]

I wonder if any historians may actually be concerned about this.

Thinking back to my college days, there is much of antiquity that is not well understood due to the inability to understand its written languages. The Rosetta Stone was an as incredible as it was rare. So much history is locked away in written language that will likely never be understood. (See this page for some examples.) A culture's language is its bridge to understanding the culture itself.

If emoticons are linguistically ambiguous, we run a risk that our culture will not be understood in the future, either.

Re:Thank you...

[jordanjay29]

You're not a fan of [] [] [] [] in your text?

Re:I don't blame the Africans,

[Dutch Gun]

I've been exposed to enough anime that I'm starting to learn spoken Japanese. I still think (T_T) looks more cynical than crying rivers, so I think that emoticon is just culturally distinct on its own merits. Most westerners are simply more familiar with the sideways emoticons, not the Japanese versions. :-) :-| :-( :-P :-/ >-(

We sort of forget that we didn't intrinsically *know* these things. We actually had to learn them along with everything else we take for granted in these modern times. So, in the case of Japanese, with enough cultural conditioning, you would probably eventually learn to interpret those emoticons the same way. I'm not sure I'd ascribe any deeper meanings in the results, such as how "Japanese look for emotion in the eyes, Westerners in the mouth" as the paper apparently did.

What's strange is the line from the writeup "In other words, we don’t all see glee in this glyph : )" which wasn't at all supported by the study's conclusion (not that we can actually READ it). From what I understand, we all DO see glee in that glyph. It was the other two Japanese emoticons that confused non-Japanese, especially Africans.