Helping People with Social Anxiety Disorder to Recognize Facial Expressions in Video Meetings

Abstract

According to previous research on social anxiety disorder (SAD) and facial expressions, those with SAD tend to view all faces as portraying negative emotions; thus, they are afraid of chatting with others when they cannot understand the real emotions being communicated. The advancement of facial recognition technology has given people opportunities to get a more precise emotional estimation of facial expressions. This study aims to investigate the practical effects of apps that detect facial expressions of emotion (e.g., AffdexMe) on people with SAD when communicating with other people through video chatting. We conducted empirical research to examine whether facial emotion recognition software can help people with SAD overcome the fear of chatting with others in video meetings and help them understand others’ emotions to reduce communication conflicts. This paper presents the design of an experiment to measure participants’ reactions when they video-chat with others using the AffdexMe application and to interview participants to get in-depth feedback. The results show that people with SAD could better recognize the emotions of others using AffdexMe. This results in more reasonable responses and better interaction during video chats. We also propose design suggestions to make the described approach better and more convenient to use. This research shed a light on the future design of emotion recognition in video chatting for people with disabilities or even ordinary users.