The aim of this study was to investigate facial expression recognition (FER) accuracy in social phobia and in particular to explore how facial expressions of emotion were misclassified. We hypothesised that compared with healthy controls, subjects with social phobia would be no less accurate in their identification of facial emotions (as reported in previous studies) but that they would misclassify facial expressions as expressing threatening emotions (anger, fear or disgust). Thirty individuals with social phobia and twenty-seven healthy controls completed a FER task which featured six basic emotions morphed using computer techniques between 0 percent (neutral) and 100 percent intensity (full emotion). Supporting our hypotheses we found no differences between the groups on measures of the accuracy of emotion recognition but that compared with healthy controls the social phobia group were more likely both to misclassify facial expressions as angry and to interpret neutral facial expressions as angry. The healthy control group were more likely to misclassify neutral expressions as sad. The importance of the role of these biases in social phobia needs further replication but may help in understanding the disorder and provide an interesting area for future research and therapy.
The ability to identify and interpret facial expressions of emotion is crucial to normal interpersonal relationships. Not only do facial expressions signal the emotional states of others, but they also influence the production and regulation of affective states and behaviour in response to these signals (Phillips, Drevets, Rauch, & Lane, 2003). The investigation of facial expression recognition (FER) in social phobia may be particularly pertinent in view of clinical reports from people with this condition that looking at faces and making eye contact with others are often difficult (Hermans & Van Honk, 2006). This may be because other peoples’ faces are seen as threatening because they convey nonverbal signs of evaluation which is a basic fear in social phobia.
In addition to its clinical face validity the investigation of responses to facial expressions of emotion in social phobia can test for cognitive biases that may be involved in this disorder. Theoretical models of social phobia suggest that biased information processing contributes both to the aetiology and maintenance of the disorder (Clark and Wells, 1995 and Rapee and Heimberg, 1997). Evidence supporting these models has included findings of biased attention to social threat (Gilboa-Schechtman et al., 1999, Mogg and Bradley, 2002 and Mogg et al., 2004), excessive attention to internal cues (Bogels and Mansell, 2004 and Mansell et al., 2003) and the negative interpretation of ambiguous social events (Amin, Foa, & Coles, 1998).
Studies of FER in social phobia have typically examined responses to viewing different facial emotions, e.g. anger, sadness, disgust, fear, happiness, surprise and neutral. These have generally suggested that there are no significant differences in FER accuracy between subjects with social phobia compared with healthy controls (Melfsen and Florin, 2002, Philippot and Douilliez, 2005 and Stevens et al., 2008). As elaborated by previous authors socially anxious individuals know as well as non-anxious individuals that an angry face means anger and a sad face means sadness (Philippot & Douilliez, 2005). The overall accuracy rates from previous studies of FER are low, often less than 50 percent (Harmer, Hill, Taylor, Cowen, & Goodwin, 2003) which would suggest that it may be important to examine how the facial emotions are misclassified. The misclassification results have not, however routinely been reported in studies.
Studies have also examined the interpretation of neutral or ambiguous facial emotions in social anxiety and these have reported some interesting findings. Some studies have reported that socially anxious individuals interpreted neutral faces as threatening whereas less socially anxious subjects interpreted them as neutral (Mohlman et al., 2007 and Yoon and Zinbarg, 2007). Other studies have however, reported no differences in the interpretation of neutral facial expressions of emotion in groups of people with social phobia and healthy controls (Philippot & Douilliez, 2005). A recent study using images of facial expressions of the emotions of anger, sadness and happiness which were presented at increasing degrees of emotional intensity (from neutral to full) reported that social phobia participants needed less intensity to correctly identify anger than the depressed or control groups (Joormann & Gotlib, 2007). The investigation of the response to neutral or ambiguous facial expressions of emotion may be important because these images may be more sensitive to changes in bias or perception than overall accuracy rates. This may also be of clinical relevance because of the inherent ambiguity of many social interactions.
The aim of this study was to further investigate FER accuracy in social phobia and in particular to explore how facial expressions of emotion were misclassified. We hypothesised that compared with healthy controls, subjects with social phobia would be no less accurate in their identification of facial expressions of emotions (as reported in previous studies above) but that they would be more prone to misclassify facial expressions as expressing threatening emotions (i.e. anger, fear or disgust).
