What your best friend sees that I don't see: comparing female close friends and casual acquaintances on the perception of emotional facial expressions of varying intensities.

It is often assumed that intimacy and familiarity will lead to better and more effective emotional communication between two individuals. However, research has failed to unequivocally support this claim. The present study proposes that close dyads exhibit superiority in the decoding of subdued facial cues than in the decoding of highly intense expressions. A total of 43 close friend dyads and 49 casual acquaintance dyads (all women) were compared on their recognition of their partner's and a stranger's subdued facial expressions. Dyadic analyses indicate that close friends were more accurate and also improved more rapidly than casual acquaintances in decoding one other's subdued expressions of sadness, anger, and happiness, especially the two negative emotions, but not in detecting the stranger's subdued expressions. The results strongly suggest that intimacy fosters more accurate decoding of subdued facial expressions.