An investigation of mental health professionals' abilities to recognize emotions and complex mental states from facial expressions

The main purpose of this study is to examine the ability of mental health workers to recognize emotions and complex states from facial expressions. For this purpose, 36 mental health professionals consisting of psychologists and psychological counselors and 24 people who are not mental health professionals were reached. The participants' ability to recognize emotions and complex states from facial expressions was assessed using the McGill Face Database. Since the original language of the data set was English, translation into Turkish and pilot study were done. The first hypothesis of this study was that mental health professionals recognize emotions and complex states from facial expressions better than other people. In the second hypothesis, it was expected that there is a significant difference between male and female participants in terms of facial expression recognition performance. The facial expression recognition performance of mental health professionals and the other group was analyzed by Independent Sample t-test, and it was found that mental health professionals recognized facial expressions significantly better. The face recognition performances of female and male participants were analyzed by Independent Sample t-test and no significant difference was found between the two groups. The findings of the research, contributions to the literature, limitations of the study and suggestions for future studies are discussed.