Date of Award

Spring 2026

Abstract

While relationships are critical to our daily emotional lives, the limited research on emotion perception among close friends presents inconsistent evidence concerning whether differences exist between close friends and strangers. The present work examined the ways in which familiarity between close friends’ shapes emotion perception. In Study 1a, expressors provided both naturally occurring and dynamic posed emotion expressions for seven emotion categories (anger, sadness, fear, disgust, happiness, surprise, and neutral) in order to develop a stimulus set where the stereotypicality of the expressions varies within-subjects. In Study 1b, a self-identified close friend of each expressor viewed and rated the expressions of their friend, and a demographically matched stranger. Emotion perception was assessed through accuracy for intended expressions (posed emotion expressions), and consistency for self-reported experience (naturally occurring emotion expressions). In Study 2, subjective perceiver ratings from an independent sample of perceivers to quantify the degree to which each expression is consistently recognized as, and meets normative expectations for, how a specific emotion is expressed were collected. In addition, stereotypicality was also assessed by using an automated facial expression coding software. Results revealed that close friendships provide an advantage for the perception of posed emotion expressions; however, this advantage was not observed for the perception of naturally occurring expressions. Notably, while the posed expressions were intentionally produced, they were found to be rather low in stereotypicality overall. These findings suggest that the “inconsistencies” found in prior work may not be inconsistencies at all but rather highlight that friendship does advantage perception but may depend on how emotion expressions are solicited.

Document Type

Dissertation

First Advisor

Jolie B Wormwood

Second Advisor

Michelle D Leichtman

Third Advisor

John D Mayer

Department or Program

Psychology

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

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