Empatia e reconhecimento de expresses faciais de emoções básicas e complexas em estudantes de Medicina

Abstract

Objective: The aim was to evaluate empathy and facial expression recognition of basic and complex emotions and their correlations in medical students. Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed in a medical school of the state of São Paulo. We evaluated 86 third and fourth year medical students with the following instruments: (i) Jefferson Scale of Empathy, (ii) Facial Expression Recognition of basic emotions task (REF) and (iii) Reading the Mind in the Eyes test (RMEt). Results: The overall mean score in the REF was 15.6 (SD: ±2.3). There was a statistical significant difference in the number of correct responses in sadness emotion in female gender compared to male (t84 = 2.30; p = 0.02). Regarding RMEt, the overall mean score was 26.5 (SD: ±3.3) with statistically significant difference between genders with higher number of correct responses among female students (t84 = 3.43; p < 0.01). The mean score on the empathy scale was 121.3 (SD: ±9.8). There was significant weak positive correlation between the total score of empathy scale and the recognition of sadness facial emotion (r = 0.29; p < 0.01). Conclusion: The number of correct responses to sadness emotion in the REF and the total score of RMEt was higher in female students compared to male. In addition, empathy seems to be directly related to the ability to recognize sadness. Other studies are needed to provide a deeper understanding of empathy and facial emotion recognition in medical students.