polka dot suitcase

Here’s something interesting. A recent study by researchers at Glasgow University suggested that people in different parts of the world interpret facial expressions differently. Apparantly, Western peeps look at the whole face when trying to figure out if another person is ticked off, frightened, or otherwise experiencing an emotion. People in the Eastern countries look primarily at the eyes.

So, when shown a bunch of photos of people expressing emotions, the study participants from Asian countries were more likely than Westerners to interpret “surprise” instead of “fear” and “anger” instead of “disgust.”

All this is interesting, but what tickled me in particular was this write-up that listed the difference in emoticons between East and West — note the lack of mouths in the Eastern emoticons:

East West differences in Emoticons
Emotion	West	East
Happy	: -)	(^_^)
Sad	: -(	(;_;) or (T_T)
Surprise	: -o	(o.o)

Very cool, right? Yeah, I thought so, too.