Relationship between types of anxiety and the ability to recognize facial expressions

Bibliographic Data

ID21284041
AuthorsYuya Fujihara (Yasuda Women's University), Kun Guo (0000-0002-6270-2468, University of Lincoln), Chang Hong Liu (0000-0002-2426-4014, Bournemouth University, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume241
Pages104100
Publication date2023-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueActa Psychologica (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0001-6918 • E-ISSN: 1873-6297
PublisherElsevier BV (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1016/j.actpsy.2023.104100
PMID38041913
OpenAlexW4389249248
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited43

This study examined whether three subtypes of anxiety (trait anxiety, state anxiety, and social anxiety) have different effects on recognition of facial expressions. One hundred and thirty-eight participants matched facial expressions of three intensity levels (20 %, 40 %, 100 %) with one of the six emotion labels ("happy", "sad", "fear", "angry", "disgust", and "surprise"). While using a conventional method of analysis we were able to replicate some significant correlations between each anxiety type and recognition performance found in the literature. However, when we used partial correlation to isolate the effect of each anxiety type, most of these correlations were no longer significant, apart from the negative correlations between Beck Anxiety Inventory and reaction time to fearful faces displayed at 40 % intensity level, and the correlations between anxiety and categorisation errors. Specifically, social anxiety was positively correlated with misidentifying a happy face as a disgust face at 40 % intensity level, and state anxiety negatively correlated with misidentifying a happy face as a sad face at 20 % intensity level. However, these partial correlation analyses became non-significant after p value adjustment for multiple comparisons. Our eye tracking data also showed that state anxiety may be associated with reduced fixations on the eye regions of low-intensity sad or fearful faces. These analyses cast doubts on some effects reported in the previous studies because they are likely to reflect a mixture of influences from highly correlated anxiety subtypes

Anger · Anxiety · Audiology · Correlation · Developmental psychology · Disgust · Facial expression · Psychiatry · Social anxiety · Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes · Clinical Psychology · Communication · Face Recognition and Perception · Olfactory and Sensory Function Studies · Psychology

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