Low mood, not anxiety, connected with micro facial expression recognition

Previous research has demonstrated that facial expression recognition, an invaluable social skill, may be impaired amongst people suffering from anxiety. Research surrounding this relationship is equivocal and little attention has been given to the effects of anxiety on the recognition of micro expressions. Thus, the present study investigated this relationship. Based on previous research, we expected that participants with high trait anxiety will show (a) poorer overall micro expression recognition and (b) better angry face recognition. 401 participants completed measures of trait and state anxiety, depression, micro facial expression recognition and indicated demographic information. The results of the study supported neither of the two hypotheses. Combined with previous findings, these results indicate that trait anxiety does not have a robust effect on either general emotion recognition or anger recognition. Previous positive findings may potentially be a consequence of unaccounted effects of low mood or age. On the other hand, the results did show effects of low mood on improved overall micro expression recognition scores and sad face recognition, and a bias towards recognizing neutral faces as sad. These findings may be attributed to biases arising from the effects of mood congruence.