Women interpret emojis differently to men, research suggests

Scientists say this is because these small digital pictograms, used to express an idea or emotion, can be ambiguous and be perceived differently by different people.

The researchers recruited 523 adults (49% men and 51% women) to review 24 different emojis.

Each emoji – taken from Apple, Windows, Android, and WeChat platforms – represented one of the six emotional states labelled by the team: happy, disgusted, fearful, sad, surprised, and angry.

They found women were able to more accurately interpret happy, fearful, sad and angry emoji labels compared to men.

No gender differences were observed for surprised or disgusted emoji, the team said.

Dr Ruth Filik, associate professor in the School of Psychology at The University of Nottingham, said: “What I found most interesting and surprising is that there are so many individual differences in how people interpret these emojis.

“It is important to note that the results reflect how often participants labelled the emoji in the same way as the researchers.

“So, we should think of the results in terms of there being differences across people in how they interpret emojis, rather than some people being better at it than others.

“We should keep these differences in mind when using emojis in our messages.”

The researchers said that stylised images of faces expressing different emotions can add both nuance as well as potential ambiguity to messages sent via texts, emails or even social media.

To understand more about how emojis are interpreted, the team recruited 270 people from the UK and 253 from China, who were aged between 18 to 84 years old.

Each emoji was assigned an emotion label by the researchers, which they say may not correspond exactly with the emoji as used in real life.

In addition to gender, the team also found age to play a role in how emoji are interpreted, with younger adults faring better than the older ones in matching the emoji with their assigned labels.

Those in the UK were also better at labelling the emoji in the same way as the researchers compared to their Chinese counterparts.

Prof Filik said: “The results show how often participants labelled the emoji in the same way as the researchers – so they reflect differences in how people interpret emojis, rather than some people being more accurate than others.

“For example, if Chinese participants use a smiling emoji to indicate they are being sarcastic, then they may be less likely to label it as ‘happy’ than UK participants.”

The researchers say ambiguity of emojis is worth further research, “especially when communicating across gender, age, or cultures”.