SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Psychology for Clinical Settings
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1486765
EMOTION RECOGNITION IN ANXIETY DISORDERS Emotion Recognition in Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, Body Dysmorphic Disorder, Skin Picking Disorder, Trichotillomania, and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Provisionally accepted
- 1West Virginia University, Morgantown, United States
- 2University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont, United States
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This systematic review evaluates patterns of emotion recognition in anxiety, obsessivecompulsive and related, and trauma-and stressor-related disorders (generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, body dysmorphic disorder, skin picking disorder, trichotillomania, and posttraumatic stress disorder). A comprehensive literature search identified 15 studies. Emotion recognition patterns were reviewed for each disorder. After considering strengths and weaknesses of individual studies and the literature as a whole, trends across disorders support a decreased recognition of sadness and an anger interpretation bias (i.e., tendency to see anger when other emotions are displayed). Conclusions are limited by a lack of covariate analyses and task validation. Future studies should investigate whether comorbid depression, transdiagnostic factors, and/or clinical severity may better explain variability in emotion recognition deficits.
Keywords: emotion recognition, Anxiety Disorders, Obsessive-compulsive disorders, trauma-and stressor-related disorders, Anxiety and related disorders
Received: 26 Aug 2024; Accepted: 13 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wheeler and Steinman. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Grace Lomont Wheeler, West Virginia University, Morgantown, United States
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