Facial emotion recognition in social anxiety: The influence of dynamic information.

Abstract

Studies indicate that people with social anxiety show changes in perception of facial emotion. Here we investigated the recognition of static and dynamic facial expressions in 2 groups varying with regard to scores on the Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN) and classified as having high social anxiety (HSA; SPIN 19; n 22) and low social anxiety (SPIN 19; n 21). Facial expressions of happiness, sadness, fear, and anger in dynamic (videos) and static (photos) conditions were presented at 4 intensities (25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%). For each condition, recognition means were analyzed with an ANOVA of model: 2 groups (2 conditions [static and dynamic] 4 emotions 4 intensities). We found an interaction between the factors Group, Condition, Emotion, and Intensity. Post hoc analysis indicated that the HSA group had better scores in the static face of anger with 25% of emotion compared with controls. No difference between groups was found in the dynamic condition. The analysis of the confusion matrix of judgments indicated that the advantage of the participants with social anxiety in the static condition was not explained by a general bias of attributing anger to facial expressions. The results suggest an advantage for individuals with social anxiety to recognize emotions in stimuli with less ecological validity (static faces). The use of dynamic faces may reduce or eliminate the differences between individuals with high and low social anxiety in the recognition of facial emotions.