What influence and being influenced smile sychrony

This project investigates how children influence each other’s emotions by analyzing smile synchrony during shared activities. Using multi-camera video recordings and validated smile detection, the study computes how often one child’s smile triggers another’s within a short time window. These trigger rates are then linked to children’s perceptions of safety, enjoyment, and stress in the group, and further modeled using Bayesian techniques to understand the role of demographics, social bonds, personality, and friendship. The findings show that mutual smiling is not random: it reflects meaningful social relationships and helps explain how positively children experience group interactions.