Misinterpretations of Emotional Facial Expressions of Alcohol Dependence in a Turkish Sample

The objective of this study was to explore the presence of impainnent in the decoding of universally recognized facial expressions-happy, sad, angry, disgusted, fearful, surprised, and neutral expressions- and to find the common patterns of interpretation and misinterpretation of alcohol dependent and healthy individuals. For this aim, the constructed computer program Emotion Recognition Test was administered to 51 detoxified alcohol dependent inpatients and 50 matched-control group participants in Turkey. The hypothesis, that alcohol dependent individuals would show more deficits in the accuracy of reading all expressions, was not supported. However, they were more likely to read disgust faces as angry ones. The most frequent expression was happy; the least one was fearful faces which were misinterpreted as surprised faces for both groups. This commonality was discussed within the literature review.