Emotional display rules are the same for online audio-visual and face-to-face scenarios across five interactant types

There has been a massive shift towards interacting online for work, social, and healthcare purposes, using audio-visual platforms such as Zoom and Teams. This shift offers a novel opportunity to test if factors that may vary between online and in-person contexts, such as feelings of closeness and anonymity, impact emotional communication in the ways theory suggests they should. In the present study, we asked large samples of Australian (N = 1339) and UK (N = 1298) residents about the display rules that govern emotional expressivity online and face-to-face with one of five target interactants (friend, co-worker, supervisor, GP/doctor, psychologist/counsellor). As hypothesised, participants reported feeling less close to others, less comfortable, and more anonymous for online compared to face-to-face scenarios—yet there were no overall differences in display rules across these contexts, with Bayesian analyses showing strong support for the null hypothesis. However, context-induced feelings of closeness and comfort predicted individual differences in display rules in some specific instances. Overall, we found strong evidence that both interpersonal and context-induced feelings of closeness were independently related to greater display rule expressivity. However, feelings of privacy were surprisingly unrelated to display rules, suggesting that other features of private and public scenarios (e.g., number of people present) may be the source of prior effects. Results also highlight important effects for social anxiety and differences between Australian and UK residents, with implications for cross-cultural professional and healthcare interactions. Overall, findings contribute to refining display rules theory and provide new insight into people’s experience of online audio-visual communication.