Psychological counselor candidates’ abilities of recognizing emotions in facial expressions

Abstract

Emotions play an important role in social life. Emotions first appear on the face and facial region mediates recognition of emotions. In this study, the counselor candidates' ability to recognize emotions in facial expressions; gender, class level, the place where spent most of life, five-factor personality traits and cognitive emotion regulation strategies were examined. The participants of the study consisted of 235 counselor candidates. In gathering the data; Personal Information Form, JACFEE photo set, Big Five Inventory, and Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire. In the analysis of the data; descriptive statistics, t-test, multivariate analysis of variance and multiple regression analysis were performed. The results of the study showed that there was no statistically significant difference in terms of emotions in the facial expressions of the participants according to gender, but there was a significant difference in the class level and the place where spent most of life. In addition, the neuroticism from the subscales of five factors personality traits were correlated with disgust expression and self-blame; positive refocusing and positive reappraisal from the subscales of cognitive emotion regulation strategies were correlated with neutral expression; and blaming others were correlated with contempt expression. These results were discussed in the context of similar investigations of the recognition of emotions in facial expressions.