Children’s facial expressions reveal fear response to gender-nonconforming boys, study finds

A new study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior suggests that children may experience subtle fear when observing boys who engage in gender-nonconforming behaviors, such as playing with dolls or dressing in feminine clothing. This reaction was not found when children observed gender-nonconforming girls. The research offers a rare glimpse into children’s unconscious reactions using facial expression analysis, and adds to growing evidence that gender-nonconforming boys face heightened social bias in childhood.

The study was led by a team of researchers in Hong Kong and Canada who wanted to better understand how children appraise their peers who do not conform to traditional gender norms. While past studies have consistently shown that children tend to evaluate gender-nonconforming peers—especially boys—less positively, those studies relied mainly on verbal responses. But young children are still developing their language skills, and they may also give socially desirable answers when asked directly. The researchers in this study wanted to see if facial expressions, which are harder to control, might provide insight into children’s more automatic emotional responses.

“For a number of years, I had been working on research about childhood gender role behavior and its association with mental health. A lot of studies by me and other researchers pointed to relationships with peers as a key factor,” said study author Doug P. VanderLaan, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Toronto Mississauga and co-editor of Gender and Sexuality Development: Contemporary Theory and Research.

“Children whose behaviors do not align with gender role stereotypes, who are sometimes referred to in the research literature as gender-nonconforming children, tend to experience poorer relationships with peers. For example, they may be bullied or experience social ostracism. In turn, this pattern can contribute to lower levels of psychological well-being. It occurred to me that fostering more positive peer relations could be one important avenue for addressing this issue.

“But to identify strategies for fostering positive peer relations, we first need to have a deeper understanding of how children think and feel about peers who display gender-nonconforming behaviors,” VanderLaan continued. “So, along with my colleagues, we conducted a series of studies aimed at understanding children’s thoughts and feelings about gender-nonconforming peers.”

One aspect that had not been considered previously was the emotional component. There was no prior research on children’s emotional reactions when they encountered a peer whose behaviors did not follow gender stereotypes. Given that emotions can have an influence in social interactions, we thought this was an important gap in our knowledge that needed to be filled.”

To explore this question, the research team studied 605 children between the ages of 4 and 9 from Hong Kong and Canada. The sample included nearly equal numbers of boys and girls. Children were shown four brief illustrated stories, each about a different hypothetical child: a gender-conforming boy, a gender-nonconforming boy, a gender-conforming girl, and a gender-nonconforming girl. The stories described each child’s preferences across four domains—activities, toys, clothing and hairstyle, and playmates—designed to signal either adherence to or departure from traditional gender expectations.

For example, the gender-conforming boy was shown preferring cars and football, dressing like his dad, and playing with boys. The gender-nonconforming boy preferred Barbie dolls and kitchens, dressed like his mom, and played with girls. Similar contrasts were used for the girl targets. Each vignette lasted about one minute, and the children’s faces were video-recorded as they watched.

These facial recordings were analyzed using a software program called FaceReader, which estimates the presence and intensity of six basic emotions—happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and surprise—based on subtle facial movements. The software uses a facial action coding system and maps over 500 facial points to determine emotional expressions, providing an objective way to analyze children’s responses without relying on their ability or willingness to explain what they feel.

“Ours was the first study to use facial emotional expressions as a window on the emotional aspect of children’s reactions to gender-nonconforming peers,” VanderLaan noted. “At the outset, we were unsure whether this method would be sensitive enough to detect any emotional differences. It is good to know that this method provides a viable route to a more comprehensive understanding of how children respond when presented with peers of varying gender role expressions.”

The researchers found a consistent pattern across the diverse sample: when viewing the gender-nonconforming boy, children showed more fear-related facial expressions than when viewing the gender-conforming boy. This difference was statistically significant, although small in size. No such differences were found when comparing reactions to the gender-conforming and gender-nonconforming girls. The increase in fearful expression was specific to the gender-nonconforming boy, suggesting that children’s emotional reactions are especially sensitive to violations of traditional masculinity.

“This increased fear response parallels other findings suggesting that children from Chinese and Euro-American cultures tend to view gender-nonconforming children less favorably, particularly in the case of feminine boys,” VanderLaan told PsyPost. “For example, they tend to be less interested in being friends with gender-nonconforming children. Also, gender-nonconforming children tend to be seen by their peers as engaging in behaviors that are ‘wrong,’ and peers also perceive them as being less happy and as less likely to be popular.”

“Importantly, rather than being inevitable, the development of these thoughts and feelings appears to be driven by societal influences. Other similar research in Thailand, where there is greater social visibility and acceptance of gender diversity, has indicated that children do not show these same prejudices against gender-nonconforming behaviors. With this in mind, there seems to be merit in the possibility that through greater social and cultural acceptance of gender diversity, we may see improvements in children’s attitudes towards gender-nonconforming peers. In turn, such improvements may help address mental health disparities among gender-nonconforming children.”

To better understand this fear response, the researchers compared the facial data to children’s answers to a set of follow-up questions. After watching each vignette, the children were asked whether they would want to be friends with the target, whether they thought others would like the target, whether they thought the target was happy, whether they liked the activities the target engaged in, and whether the target’s behavior was morally acceptable.

Interestingly, the children who showed more fear in response to the gender-nonconforming boy were also more likely to say he seemed unhappy. But the fear response was not related to the other verbal judgments, such as friendship preference or moral judgment. This finding suggests that the facial expression of fear may reflect children’s internal appraisal of emotional well-being in gender-nonconforming boys, rather than a broader social evaluation.

These results offer a unique window into the emotional side of children’s biases, highlighting how gender norms are policed even at an early age—not just through speech, but through emotion. Prior studies have shown that gender-nonconforming children, especially boys, often face peer rejection and are more vulnerable to poor mental health. The current findings provide evidence that even brief exposure to nontraditional gender expression can elicit negative emotional reactions from peers, which may contribute to these children’s social challenges.

One possible explanation for the observed fear response is that gender-nonconforming boys are perceived as violating expectations in a way that is socially discouraged. Boys, in particular, are often subject to strict rules about how they should behave, dress, and interact. From a young age, children learn these rules from parents, teachers, peers, and media. When a boy violates them—by playing with dolls or wearing feminine clothing—he may be seen as strange or confusing, and that confusion may provoke discomfort or fear.

Another explanation involves social identity and group dynamics. Children tend to prefer peers who are like themselves and may treat those who differ as outsiders. According to developmental theories, violations of gender norms can trigger discomfort because they challenge a child’s understanding of what it means to be a boy or girl. This discomfort could be expressed through subtle emotional cues, such as fearful facial expressions, even if the child does not verbally express disapproval.

“Unfortunately, I was not terribly surprised to see that children had an elevated fear response to the feminine boy character,” VanderLaan said. “There’s a fair amount of research indicating that children and adults often have negative, prejudiced reactions towards gender nonconformity, and particularly towards male femininity. There are also wider literatures on femmephobia, which refers to negativity or aversion towards femininity, and its connection to homophobia and negative reactions towards LGBTQ+ folks.”

“So, our findings fit within this wider frame. At the same time, out findings are unique in showing that this kind of emotional sentiment can emerge in childhood and be detected by using facial emotional expressions, which is an objective and implicit behavioral measure.”

As with all research, there are some limitations to consider. The facial expression software—while useful—had technical difficulties and required extensive manual checking to ensure accuracy. In total, more than half the original recordings were excluded due to problems with facial detection, especially when children moved their heads.

“Our study of facial emotional expressions relied on automated, computerized tools that are quite new to the field of child development,” VanderLaan said. “There is still a lot of room to make improvements in the accuracy of these tools, which should help to produce even more precise results in the future.”

Additionally, “we relied on stories of hypothetical peers,” he added. “It will be important to see how children respond to gender-nonconforming peers in real-world settings, and how relationships among peers of varying gender role expressions unfold over time. That kind of real-world research would help further inform how we might go about improving peer relations so that children of varying gender role expressions can thrive equally.”

Despite these limitations, the study opens new directions for understanding childhood gender biases. The use of facial expressions as an implicit measure may help uncover attitudes that are otherwise difficult to detect. In future work, researchers could explore how these emotional responses change with age, vary across cultures, or are influenced by parental attitudes and media exposure.

The study, “Children’s Facial Emotional Expressions to Gender‑Nonconforming Hypothetical Peers,” was authored by Karen Man Wa Kwan, Simran Isani, Haley J. James, A. Natisha Nabbijohn, Laura N. MacMullin, Sylvia Yun Shi, Bill Hung Piu Poon, Diana E. Peragine, Wang Ivy Wong, and Doug P. VanderLaan.