Yuki's Study of Emoticons (AQA GCSE Psychology)

A cross-cultural study of non-verbal behaviour

• Cross-cultural research involves investigating differences between cultures on specific variables, in this case non-verbal behaviour

• Yuki et al. (2007) focuses on cultural differences between American and Japanese participants as these two cultures differ in many ways including:

  • Japanese people place importance on harmony and maintaining social order as Japan is a collectivist culture, while Americans value personal freedom, and independence as the USA is an individualistic culture

  • Japanese culture emphasises politeness, respect, and the social hierarchy, whereas American culture. values directness, informality, and equality

  • Japanese people bow to each other as a greeting, remove their shoes indoors, and call each other ‘Ms/Mr’, while Americans greet each other using handshakes or slaps on the back, may not remove shoes indoors, and use first names even when speaking to superiors at work

  • Japanese people do not express emotion loudly or freely, they prefer to hide their true feelings through a ‘mask’ of smiling or maintaining a neutral face; Americans are more likely to express feelings, ‘make a fuss’ (e.g. by complaining or calling someone out) and they are more likely to be open about how they feel

• Yuki (who has some experience of American culture but who lives and works in Japan) had noticed that American people produced much wider smiles than Japanese people, possibly because Japanese people prefer to hide their emotions and a wide smile signals ‘I am happy!’

• Yuki realised that emoticons sent by Japanese and American colleagues reflected cross-cultural differences in how smiling is represented, as :) from Americans and (^_^) from Japanese 

• This led Yuki to realise that Japanese people suppress their mouths when smiling but they cannot suppress their eyes i.e. the eyes smiled even when the mouth didn’t as seen in the (^_^) emoticon

• Yuki et al.’s (2007) is outlined below:

  • The study aimed to test the theory that Japanese and American people interpret emoticons differently

  • 95 Japanese and 11 American students took part in the study

  • The participants were presented with the following emoticons, each of which combined either happy/sad/neutral eyes and/or mouth

Yuki's emoticon diagram

Yuki’s emoticons: 1 = happy eyes + neutral mouth; 2 = neutral eyes + sad mouth; 3 = happy eyes + sad mouth; 4 = neutral eyes + happy mouth; 5 = sad eyes + neutral mouth; 6 = sad eyes + happy mouth

• The participants used a 9-point scale to rate how happy each emoticon was where 9 = ‘very happy’ down to 1 = ‘very sad’

• Japanese participants rated the ‘happy eyes’ emoticons as being happier particularly for emoticon 3 which showed happy eyes and a sad mouth

• American participants rated the ‘happy mouths’ emoticons as being happier particularly for emoticon 6 which showed sad eyes and a happy mouth

• There may be cultural differences in how Japanese and American people interpret facial expressions which may be due to cultural norms i.e. Japanese people prefer to mask their feelings whereas American people show their feelings openly

The film star Reese Witherspoon may have good reason to smile widely but is this true for all Americans?

Evaluation of Yuki’s study of emoticons

Strengths

• Yuki’s study uses a standardised procedure in controlled conditions which means that it is high in reliability

• Yuki’s findings have good application in terms of cross-cultural understanding e.g. in business, education, politics

Weaknesses

• Interpreting emoticons is an artificial task i.e. not something that is done every day which lowers the validity of the research

• Rating scales are a very narrow way of measuring a complex variable such as emotion which limits the usefulness of the findings