Emoji smiles do not convey sincerity like human smiles: Insights from the emotion as social information model

Research on smile perception indicates that smiles containing a cheek raiser tend to be judged as happier, more sincere, and more authentic than those without this cue. However, while this is well established for human smiles, less is known about how such cues are perceived in emojis. Guided by the emotions as social information (EASI) model, which posits that emotional expressions influence observers through inferential and affective pathways, this study examined judgements of sincerity for enjoyment and nonenjoyment smiles produced by human and emoji encoders. In Experiment 1, participants judged whether smiles (human or emoji) were "really happy" or "not really happy." Both stimulus types included smiles that varied in cues of sincerity (presence or absence of the cheek raiser). In Experiment 2, the same task was repeated with open or closed mouth variations. Participants identified human enjoyment smiles as "really happy" more often than nonenjoyment smiles, whereas emojis were rated as "really happy" regardless of the sincerity cue. Closed mouth smiles were judged as less happy than open mouth smiles, and judgements were faster for emojis than for human faces. These findings suggest that, in line with the EASI model, emoji-based expressions may elicit affective rather than inferential processing, highlighting their limited equivalence to human smiles in digital communication. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).