Brief facial emotional recognition tool for indian population: Development and validation

Facial emotion recognition is an essential component of social cognition. Due to cultural differences in emotional expression and recognition, assessment of facial emotion requires culture and ethnic specific instruments. Currently available instruments in the Indian context have limitations of copyright issues and longer version that limit their use. Hence, there is a need for brief, culturally validated tools for the Indian population.

This study aimed to develop an ecologically valid facial emotion recognition tool and validate the same among the Indian population.

The study was conducted in three phases at a tertiary care center. In Phase 1, nine mental health professionals depicted seven emotions, yielding 1636 photographs. After multiple stages of expert review and participant labeling, 130 photographs were shortlisted. In Phase 2, 33 healthy mental health professionals validated these images across two sessions, and images with over 80 % concordance were selected, resulting in a final set of 21 images. In Phase 3, the tool was administered to 45 patients with schizophrenia, 45 biological relatives, and 38 healthy controls.

Patients with schizophrenia demonstrated significantly lower recognition of negative emotions (anger, disgust, fear) compared to healthy controls. Biological relatives also showed poorer recognition compared to healthy controls, particularly for anger, but no significant difference was observed between patients and their relatives. The Cronbach's alpha value for the tool was 0.631.

The newly developed brief facial emotion recognition tool is a reliable, and culturally appropriate tool for facial emotion recognition in the Indian context, with potential utility in both clinical and research settings.