diff --git a/PythonAPI/pycocotools/coco.py b/PythonAPI/pycocotools/coco.py
index 77a77c0d4ce5b10dca0a0ac2bdc0c3ae4664c867..f23c73ffe7891316724cc5267ebf232064f2f881 100644
--- a/PythonAPI/pycocotools/coco.py
+++ b/PythonAPI/pycocotools/coco.py
@@ -293,7 +293,7 @@ class COCO:
 
         print 'Loading and preparing results...     '
         tic = time.time()
-        if type(resFile) == str:
+        if type(resFile) == str or type(resFile) == unicode:
             anns = json.load(open(resFile))
         elif type(resFile) == np.ndarray:
             anns = self.loadNumpyAnnotations(resFile)