Cross-Cultural Study of Avatars' Facial Expressions and Design Considerations Within Asian Countries

Avatars are increasingly used to express our emotions in our online communications. Such avatars are used based on the assumption that avatar expressions are interpreted universally among any cultures. However, our former study showed there are cultural differences in interpreting avatar facial expressions. This paper summarizes the results of cross cultural evaluations of avatar expressions among five Asian countries. The goals of this study are: 1) to investigate cultural differences in avatar expression evaluation and apply findings from Psychological study in human facial expression recognition, 2) to identify design features that cause cultural differences in avatar facial expression interpretation. The results confirmed that 1) there are cultural differences in interpreting avatars’ facial expressions among Asian countries, and the psychological theory that suggests physical proximity affects facial expression recognition accuracy is also applicable to avatar facial expressions, 2) use of gestures and gesture marks may sometimes cause counter-effects in recognizing avatar facial expressions.