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1. Digitally saving face: An experimental investigation of cross-cultural differences in the use of emoticons and emoji

   Togans, L. J.; Holtgraves, T.; Kwon, G.; & Zelaya, T. E. (January 2021, Journal of pragmatics)

   Across three experiments we examined cross-cultural differences in the use of emoticons (Experiment 1) and emoji (Experiments 2 and 3) when sending text messages. In all experiments, participants wrote text messages to another person based on different hypothetical situations (varying in valence or face-threat). We assume that digital CMC cues can serve a face-management function. Hence, based on the assumption that East Asians, relative to Americans, tend to be more concerned with face-management, we expected East Asians to use more emoji and emoticons than Americans, especially in threatening situations. Our results supported our hypotheses: East Asians used significantly more CMC cues overall, and displayed greater situational sensitivity (i.e., used more situationally-congruent CMC cues). Moreover, there were significant, positive correlations between emoji use and scores on collectivism and interdependent self-construal. The preference for emoji use by East Asians does not appear to be a function of poorer English language ability; in Experiment 3 there was a significant positive correlation between ESL ability and emoji use. We discuss these findings in the context of past cross-cultural communication research as well as politeness theory and face-negotiation theory. 

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2. Intergroup cooperation in the United States and Japan: Revisiting Yuki's (2003) theory on the cultural difference in the conceptualization of group boundaries

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cresp.2024.100200  

   Imada, Hirotaka; Tsudaka, Gen; Mifune, Nobuhiro; Mizuno, Keiko; Schug, Joanna; Kusano, Kodai (July 2024, Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology)

   Social identity theory posits that individuals perceive the in-group as a homogenous entity comprised of depersonalized individuals, and this theory has provided a foundation to understand intergroup processes for many years. Cross-cultural research has suggested social identity theory may not apply to East Asians, who conceptualize their in-groups differently than those in from Western cultures. Specifically, Yuki and colleagues contend that East Asians perceive in-groups as networks wherein each individual is connected through personal ties, rather than homogenous entity comprised of depersonalized individuals. Furthermore, prior research has shown that East Asians are more likely to trust out-group members with potential personal connections, similarly to how they trust actual in-group members. This reflects their group boundary perception based on personal linkages rather than categorical membership. Conversely, individuals from Western cultures tend to trust in-group members more than out-group members, regardless of potential personal connections. Our preregistered study (N = 332 Japanese and 345 American university students) aimed to conceptually replicate key findings that support Yuki's account and expand upon the theory in the context of intergroup cooperation. Overall, we failed to find evidence for the network-based and category-based cooperation and trust among Japanese and Americans, respectively. Consequently, our results highlight the need for further experimental investigation and validation of Yuki and colleagues' theoretical framework. 

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3. Emojis predict dropouts of remote workers: An empirical study of emoji usage on GitHub

   https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261262  

   Lu, Xuan; Ai, Wei; Chen, Zhenpeng; Cao, Yanbin; Mei, Qiaozhu (January 2022, PLOS ONE)

   Danforth, Christopher M. (Ed.)

   Emotions at work have long been identified as critical signals of work motivations, status, and attitudes, and as predictors of various work-related outcomes. When more and more employees work remotely, these emotional signals of workers become harder to observe through daily, face-to-face communications. The use of online platforms to communicate and collaborate at work provides an alternative channel to monitor the emotions of workers. This paper studies how emojis, as non-verbal cues in online communications, can be used for such purposes and how the emotional signals in emoji usage can be used to predict future behavior of workers. In particular, we present how the developers on GitHub use emojis in their work-related activities. We show that developers have diverse patterns of emoji usage, which can be related to their working status including activity levels, types of work, types of communications, time management, and other behavioral patterns. Developers who use emojis in their posts are significantly less likely to dropout from the online work platform. Surprisingly, solely using emoji usage as features, standard machine learning models can predict future dropouts of developers at a satisfactory accuracy. Features related to the general use and the emotions of emojis appear to be important factors, while they do not rule out paths through other purposes of emoji use. 

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4. People use both heterogeneity and minority representation to evaluate diversity

   https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abf2507  

   Abascal, Maria; Xu, Janet; Baldassarri, Delia (March 2021, Science Advances)

   null (Ed.)

   The term “diversity,” although widely used, can mean different things. Diversity can refer to heterogeneity, i.e., the distribution of people across groups, or to the representation of specific minority groups. We use a conjoint experiment with a race-balanced, national sample to uncover which properties, heterogeneity or minority representation, Americans use to evaluate the extent of racial diversity a neighborhood and whether this assessment varies by participants’ race. We show that perceived diversity is strongly associated with heterogeneity. This association is stronger for Whites than for Blacks, Latinos, or Asians. In addition, Blacks, Latinos, and Asians view neighborhoods where their own group is largest as more diverse. Whites vary in their tendency to associate diversity with representation, and Whites who report conservative stances on diversity-related policy issues view predominately White neighborhoods as more diverse than predominately Black neighborhoods. People can agree that diversity is desirable while disagreeing on what makes a community diverse. 

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5. Dehumanization During the COVID-19 Pandemic

   https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.634543  

   Markowitz, David M.; Shoots-Reinhard, Brittany; Peters, Ellen; Silverstein, Michael C.; Goodwin, Raleigh; Bjälkebring, Pär (February 2021, Frontiers in Psychology)

   null (Ed.)

   Communities often unite during a crisis, though some cope by ascribing blame or stigmas to those who might be linked to distressing life events. In a preregistered two-wave survey, we evaluated the dehumanization of Asians and Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our first wave (March 26–April 2, 2020; N = 917) revealed dehumanization was prevalent, between 6.1% and 39% of our sample depending on measurement. Compared to non-dehumanizers, people who dehumanized also perceived the virus as less risky to human health and caused less severe consequences for infected people. They were more likely to be ideologically Conservative and believe in conspiracy theories about the virus. We largely replicated the results 1 month later in our second wave (May 6–May 13, 2020; N = 723). Together, many Americans dehumanize Asians and Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic with related perceptions that the virus is less problematic. Implications and applications for dehumanization theory are discussed. 

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