Effect of context on perception of emotion among psychiatric patients

The purpose of this research was to examine the extent to which verbal statements of context influence psychiatric patients' perception of photographs of emotion (fear, anger, sadness, and happiness). The major findings showed that, when photographs were paired congruently with context statements, there were significant changes in agreement among subjects on two of the four emotion stimuli. There was significantly less agreement on the meaning of facial expressions when the stimuli for fear, anger, and happiness were accompanied by incongruent verbal statements than when they were viewed alone. These data appear to have implications for practitioners working with this population.