This is what the "grinning face with smiling eyes" emoji looks like on devices for each of these platforms.
Smiling eyes might be lying eyes.

University of Minnesota scientists have found that humanlike emojis can get lost in translation. It can result in significant misunderstandings between people.

This happens two ways.

First, there’s the computer translation glitch. What’s sent as a smiling face from a Google phone would appear as a frown on the receiver’s Apple iPhone and vice versa.

Then there’s the human part. People interpret emojis differently.

Hannah Miller is a doctoral student at University of Minnesota. She works with a group of scientists there. She posted the findings on the group's blog, an online journal. Miller studies links between humans and computers. She investigates how to design technology to improve people's lives.

Turn That Frown Upside Down!

Miller’s blog post showed how the “grinning face with smiling eyes” appears across 10 different types of phones. On some phones the same emoji looks different. Some phones show teeth. Some mouths are open while others are just a straight line. Some have open eyes while others are closed. The corners of the lips are turned up on some while others are turned downward.

Miller studied how emoji diversity causes miscommunication. The team used five of the most popular humanlike emojis. They asked participants to describe the emoji in words. They also asked about their feelings when seeing it.

Miller writes that they found a lot of opportunity for miscommunication.

For example, the grinning face with smiling eyes from Apple’s iPhone is sent as a somewhat sad emoji. However, the study found it will be received on an Android phone as a fairly happy one.

The study team had people rate the emojis in terms of their feelings toward them. They gave them numbers from minus 5 to plus 5. Minus scores were negative, or sad. Positive scores were usually happy.

For nine of the 22 emojis tested, the average difference in rating between two phone systems was greater than two points.

Is That A Clap? Or Praise? Or Something Else?

People also described emojis differently.

When seeing an Apple emoji of a person raising both hands in celebration, people described it as “stop” and “clap.” When describing Google’s form of the same emoji people used “praise” and “hand.”

Miller said the biggest surprise was that people may interpret the same emoji in different ways.

In other words, people see things differently.

Whether people use the same phone system and see the same emoji or whether they see different emojis, the differences in their feelings is almost the same.

Scientists found that the sender and receiver differed by about 2 points in feelings toward the emoji. This happened when the picture was translated across phone systems.

Even when comparing Apple to Apple responses, the average difference was just under 2 points.

Moving Away From Written Language

Some scholars argue that emoji use represents a huge shift in language. Understanding its part in how humans communicate could be important in developing new technology, they say.

The idea for the study started when Miller noticed that an emoji she saw on Facebook wasn’t the same as what she saw on her phone.

“That’s kind of an important thing,” she said. “I think people aren’t aware of it and now they can realize someone on the other side isn’t seeing what they’re seeing.”

Miller's partner, Isaac Johnson, said the students had fun with the study. “It really caught our imagination,” he said.

Getting More Emoji Studies Ready

The study involved 304 people chatting in pairs. The goal was to create a situation to see how feelings toward emojis would be different in two-way conversations.

Miller posted her study on the blog and saw interest grow. “I honestly had no clue it was gonna catch fire like this,” she said. Miller says people are taking it seriously. Still, she admits that emoji miscommunication is not that important. It isn't going to cause a war, she joked.

She and the team already are preparing more studies. They will study interpretations of emoji from people with different backgrounds and how emojis are used along with language and messages. She thinks more study might clear up the emoji communication problem.

The main goal is to make life better for humans, Miller said.

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