- Women identified emoji emotions better — and researchers theorized that childcare skills gave them an edge
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Research shows that men have difficulty understanding the meaning of emoji faces because they are less sensitive than women.
Researchers asked 500 men and women from Britain and China to identify the emotions depicted in a series of small yellow icons popular in text messages and social media posts.
They also found that British people had more difficulty recognizing the “disgusting” face, possibly because the notoriously reserved Brits are less likely to express that emotion and keep their disgust closer to the vest.
Participants in the study looked at emojis representing happiness, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise and anger.
Researchers asked 500 men and women from Britain and China to identify the emotions displayed in a series of emojis, those little yellow icons popular in text messages. Women displaced men because they were more attentive in reading the meaning of the icons
Study participants looked at emojis representing happiness, disgust, fear, sadness, surprise and anger – across multiple tech operating systems that vary in emoji design (above)
Women fared better across the board. The researchers said this may be because women are more sensitively attuned to recognizing the emotions of human babies.
Yihua Chen, from the University of Nottingham, said: ‘Women show greater accuracy in recognizing emotions than men. One possible explanation is the ‘primary caregiver hypothesis’.
‘Accurate and rapid identification of emotions in children, especially facial expressions, is a very important part of pediatric care, as infant mortality has generally been high throughout human evolution.’
Overall, the Westerners did better than the Chinese at recognizing emoji emotions, but struggled with the “disgusting” face, which has downward-facing facial features with a wobbly mouth, furrowed eyebrows and squinted eyes. The researchers said this may be due to “specific emotional experiences across cultures.”
They also noted that in China the “smile” face was often used to represent emotions other than happiness. The research was published in the scientific journal Plos One.
Britain is one of the most emoji-hungry countries in the world, with half of us sending at least one every day. They are also popular across all age groups, with little variation between generations.
The researchers found that English posts on X, formerly Twitter, were also littered with emojis – more so than on Chinese social media platform Weibo.
Emojis are a standard feature on smartphones and computers. The cartoonish faces expressing different emotions date back to the 1990s and have since become a cultural concept.
In 2015, Oxford Dictionaries even named the ‘crying with laughter’ emoji ‘word of the year’. Casper Grathwohl, vice president of Oxford University Press, said at the time: “Traditional alphabet scripts struggle to meet the fast-paced, visually focused demands of 21st century communications.”
‘It is not surprising that a pictographic script such as emoji has stepped in to fill these gaps; it is flexible, direct and produces a beautiful tone.’
“As a result,” Grathwohl concluded, “emojis are becoming an increasingly rich form of communication, one that transcends language boundaries.”