title: A quantitative analysis of facial emotion recognition in obsessive-compulsive disorder.
abstract: Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is characterized by persistent and unwanted obsessions generally accompanied by ritualistic behaviors or compulsions. Previous research proposed specific disgust facial emotion recognition deficits in patients with OCD. This research however, remains largely inconsistent. Therefore, the results of 10 studies contrasting facial emotion recognition accuracy in patients with OCD (n=221) and non-psychiatric controls (n=224) were quantitatively reviewed and synthesized using meta-analytic techniques. Patients with OCD were less accurate than controls in recognizing emotional facial expressions. Patients were also less accurate in recognizing negative emotions as a whole; however, this was largely due to significant differences in disgust and anger recognition specifically. The results of this study suggest that patients with OCD have difficulty recognizing specific negative emotions in faces and may misclassify emotional expressions due to symptom characteristics within the disorder. The contribution of state-related emotion perception biases to these findings requires further clarification.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Alexander Robert
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Daros
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Electronic address: zakzanis@utsc.utoronto.ca.
authors.forename: Konstantine K
authors.initials: KK
authors.lastname: Zakzanis
authors.affiliation: Sunnybrook Research Institute, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: Neil Alexander
authors.initials: NA
authors.lastname: Rector
mesh_terms: D015982:Bias; D004644:Emotions; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009771:Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D021641:Recognition, Psychology
keywords: Affect perception; Anger; Disgust; Emotion processing; Emotion recognition