Yuki study of emoticons

• Aim

  to investigate whether different cultures interpret emotions differently
• Method

  cross cultural study, independent groups design

  95 Japanese students

  118 American students

  shown 6 emotions with different combination of eyes and mouth

  participants had to rate the happiness of each emoticon
• Results

  Japanese students gave a higher rating to faces with happy eyes even if it had a sad mouth

  American students gave a higher rating to faces with happy mouths even if it had sad eyes
• Conclusion

  Japanese and Americans interpret facial expressions differently due to cultural norms and expectations

  Americans may be brought up to express their emotions openly

  Japanese may be brought up to hide their feelings so the eyes explain how they are feeling
• Strength

  -high reliability

  lab setting so high control and easily replicated
• weakness

  -low generalisability

  only tested 2 countries. Asia has lots of countries that could provide different results

  -rating scales is too simplified as emotions are too complex

  -too simplified as it only looked at happiness and sadness