Running head: RECOGNITION OF FACIAL EXPRESSIONS OF EMOTION 1 Recognition of Facial Expressions of Emotion: The Effects of Anxiety, Depression, and Fear of Negative Evaluation Rachel Merchak Wittenberg University Author Note Rachel Merchak, Psychology Department, Wittenberg University. This research was conducted in collaboration with Dr. Stephanie Little, Psychology Department, Wittenberg University, and Dr. Michael Anes, Psychology Department, Wittenberg University. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Rachel Merchak, 10063 Fox Chase Drive, Loveland, OH 45140. E‐mail:
[email protected] RECOGNITION OF FACIAL EXPRESSIONS OF EMOTION 2 Abstract Anxiety is a debilitating disorder that can cause those suffering from it social dysfunction. This research focuses on how anxiety is associated with recognition of emotion on faces, as that may be a contributing factor to the social woes of those suffering from anxiety, both general and social. However, depression and fear of negative evaluation may also be associated with difficulty in recognizing emotions. In this study, 48 college students were presented with 60 facial expressions of emotion for either 500ms or 2s and asked to identify the emotion that was portrayed by choosing from a list of 6 possible choices: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, neutral, and sadness. Participants then completed measures of depressive and anxious (general and social) symptoms and fear of negative evaluation. Partial correlations were used to analyze the data. It was found that when depression and sex were controlled for, higher fear of negative evaluation and high social anxiety scores were correlated with better accuracy in identifying happy facial expressions. Additionally, higher general anxiety scores were marginally correlated with lower accuracy in identifying facial expressions of disgust.