A psychologist named Yuki conducted a study into how different cultures interpret emoticons. He showed Japanese and American participants a set of emoticons with conflicting eye and mouth expressions, for example, happy eyes with a sad mouth. He measured how they rated the emotion of the face.

Write a suitable alternative hypothesis for Yuki's study of emoticons.

A hypothesis is a testable statement. An alternative hypothesis (H1) predicts that there will be an effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable. In Yuki's study, the IV is the culture of the participant (Japanese or American) and the DV is their interpretation of the emoticon's emotion. A good hypothesis should be operationalised, meaning it specifies how the variables will be measured. The answer provided is a directional hypothesis because it predicts the specific direction of the difference (Japanese focus on eyes, Americans on mouth).