Reading nonverbal cues to emotions: the advantages and liabilities of relationship closeness

Accuracy at reading nonverbal cues to emotions was examined for close friends, less close friends, and strangers. Forty-eight senders were videotaped talking about an experience during which they felt either very happy, very sad, or very angry. Half of the time they expressed their emotion clearly, and half of the time they concealed their emotion. Forty-eight judges watched these tapes without sound and attempted to identify the senders' emotions. Each judge watched a videotape of both a platonic friend and a stranger. Overall, friends were more accurate than strangers at identifying the senders' emotions; however, less close friends were better than closer friends at correctly judging concealed sadness and anger. In discussing these findings, we consider models of motivated inaccuracy, accommodatingness, and emotions as calls to action. KEY WORDS: accommodatingness; close relationships; emotion; motivated inaccuracy; nonverbal behavior; nonverbal decoding.