Social anxiety disorder women easily recognize fearfull, sad and happy faces: the influence of gender.
BACKGROUND
It has been suggested that individuals with social anxiety disorder (SAD) are exaggeratedly concerned about approval and disapproval by others. Therefore, we assessed the recognition of facial expressions by individuals with SAD, in an attempt to overcome the limitations of previous studies.


METHODS
The sample was formed by 231 individuals (78 SAD patients and 153 healthy controls). All individuals were treatment naïve, aged 18-30 years and with similar socioeconomic level. Participants judged which emotion (happiness, sadness, disgust, anger, fear, and surprise) was presented in the facial expression of stimuli displayed on a computer screen. The stimuli were manipulated in order to depict different emotional intensities, with the initial image being a neutral face (0%) and, as the individual moved on across images, the expressions increased their emotional intensity until reaching the total emotion (100%). The time, accuracy, and intensity necessary to perform judgments were evaluated.


RESULTS
The groups did not show statistically significant differences in respect to the number of correct judgments or to the time necessary to respond. However, women with SAD required less emotional intensity to recognize faces displaying fear (p=0.002), sadness (p=0.033) and happiness (p=0.002), with no significant differences for the other emotions or men with SAD.


CONCLUSIONS
The findings suggest that women with SAD are hypersensitive to threat-related and approval-related social cues. Future studies investigating the neural basis of the impaired processing of facial emotion in SAD using functional neuroimaging would be desirable and opportune.
Arrais
Kátia C
KC
Department of Neuroscience and Behavior, Ribeirão Preto Medical School, University of São Paulo, Brazil.
Machado-de-Sousa
João Paulo
JP
Trzesniak
Clarissa
C
Santos Filho
Alaor
A
Ferrari
Maria Cecília F
MC
Osório
Flávia L
FL
Loureiro
Sonia R
SR
Nardi
Antonio E
AE
Hetem
Luiz Alberto B
LA
Zuardi
Antonio W
AW
Hallak
Jaime Eduardo C
JE
Crippa
José Alexandre S
JA
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology*; D004644:Emotions; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D012727:Sex Characteristics; D012938:Social Perception; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D055815:Young Adult