Examination of Facial Emotion Recognition Skills of Individuals with Social Anxiety

INTRODUCTION: The ability to figure out emotions very quickly while interacting and reacting appropriately is essential for acceptable social behavior. This study assessed the effect of social anxiety level on emotion recognition in facial expressions in a large cross-sectional case population, without a time limitation to avoid the negative effect of reaction time.
METHODS: The data collection tools involved the sociodemographic characteristics data form, the Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (BFNE), the Brief Social Phobia Scale (BSPS), and the Emotion Identification Test from Facial Expressions.
RESULTS: A total of 641 university students with a mean age of 21.36 ± 2.98 years participated in the study. There was a positive correlation between the BFNE and BSPS and its subdimensions. The BFNE had a negative relationship with the neutral emotion. There was a positive correlation between the BSPS and the feeling of disgust. There was a significant difference between individuals with high social anxiety and individuals with low social anxiety in recognizing anger and disgust emotions. There was no difference between the socially anxious groups and non-socially anxious groups in the overall misclassification of identifying facial expressions. Individuals with high social anxiety had a significantly higher fear of being negatively evaluated than those with low social anxiety.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: Considering that facial expressions convey basic social information, understanding the interpretation of facial expressions is important for understanding social anxiety. Therefore, comprehensively understanding face recognition-oriented biases will guide future intervention strategies through cognitive processing in social anxiety.