Interpersonal distance plays a crucial role during social interactions and needs to be regulated according to the emotion expressed by others as well as their approaching / withdrawing movements. Here, we examined in 64 healthy adults both their preferred distance and their postural adjustment using i) an active computerized distance task and ii) a passive viewing postural task in response to virtual faces expressing different emotions and simulating an approaching or withdrawing movement. We found that the interpersonal distance tends to decrease in affiliative and pro-social situation (happy, sad, fearful and neutral faces) and to increase in threatening situations (angry and disgusted faces). Moreover, our results provided further evidence that postural stability decreases when viewing emotional social stimuli and most notably in response to approaching faces. Overall, our study helps to understand how distance to others and approach-avoidance postural adjustment vary in an emotional social context.