Researchers at the University of Michigan and Peking University analyze 427 million messages from nearly 4 million smartphone users in 212 countries and regions to see if emoji use was universal or differed based on user location and culture. They used a popular input method app—Kika Emoji Keyboard—made available in 60 languages. The team’s results are believed to be the first large-scale analysis of emoji usage.

“Emojis are everywhere. They are becoming the ubiquitous language that bridges everyone across different cultures,” says Wei Ai, a doctoral student at the University of Michigan School of Information.

In line with perceptions of the culture, the romantic French embrace icons associated with hearts, while users from other countries prefer emojis related to faces. Countries where ties between individuals are integrated and tight, like Mexico, Chile, Peru, and Colombia, use more emojis expressing sadness, anger, and negative feelings. People in long-term orientation societies who tend to have values that center on the future like French, Hungarians, and Ukrainians—are less likely to use negative emojis than those living in societies with low long-term orientation like Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Israel.