The Influence of Social Context on Adolescents’ use of Prototypical Facial Expressions

Adolescents’ social behaviour varies by social context (e.g., who they are with); they might ‘play it cool’ with peers while displaying vulnerability with caregivers. Yet, the way in which social context affects teenagers’ nonverbal expression is unknown. The current study addresses this knowledge gap by examining how teenagers’ facial expressions differs when discussing emotionally charged topics with a friend vs. with a caregiver. Thirty-one 11 to 16-year-old participants engaged in two separate conversations, with their caregiver and friend, respectively (social context). Within each context, they spoke about emotionally charged topics (happy vs angry) of their choosing (emotional type). Facial analysis software (iMotions) was employed to quantify the prototypicality of angry and happy facial expressions. Two separate within-subject factorial (2x2) ANOVAs were conducted to assess the effect of social context and emotional type on the prototypicality of happy and angry facial expressions. There was a significant main effect of social context on prototypical facial cues of anger (F(1, 30) = 5.45, p = .026) with adolescents exhibiting more prototypical angry expressions with their friends than with their caregivers. Moreover, there was a significant main effect of emotional type on prototypical facial cues of happiness (F(1, 30) = 4.72, p = .038) with adolescents displaying more prototypical happy facial expressions when discussing happy topics compared to angry topics. No other effects were significant. The above main effects were rendered non-significant after accounting for sex assigned at birth and age. As the current study is ongoing, the next steps will be to increase our sample size to boost statistical power and to investigate whether the change in non-verbal encoding we observe across social context relates to teens' socio-emotional functioning. With these results, we can better support teenagers in their emotional expression to foster relationship formation and social success throughout adolescence.