Evidence map›Paper›PMID 40947611›Full record

ArticleJournal of traumatic stress2026

Impaired recognition of facial expressions of emotions in refugees: The role of war-related trauma.

Edita Fino, Denis Mema, Maria Ida Gobbini

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Journal of traumatic stress, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

  1. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Edita FinoDepartment of Psychology, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8904-9086
Denis MemaBrückenkomponente Albanien, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH, Tirana, Albania.
Maria Ida GobbiniDepartment of Medical and Surgical Sciences, St. Orsola-Malpighi Hospital, Alma Mater University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6727-7934

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Exposure to traumatic events is associated with biases in the perception of emotional facial expressions. By bridging research on trauma exposure and emotion recognition, the present study investigated the impact of war-related trauma on the recognition of facial expressions of emotions in a sample of war trauma-exposed refugees (N = 108) from West Asian countries. Through a forced-choice facial emotion recognition experiment, we assessed how trauma exposure and face gender influenced accuracy and biases in identifying six primary emotions. Participants judged facial expressions of anger, sadness, fear, disgust, surprise, and happiness displayed by a set of 240 faces corresponding to 20 female and 20 male models from the Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces dataset. Expressions consisted of short videos showing each face's transition from neutral to full emotion. The results showed impaired recognition of negative emotions, with fear being the least accurately recognized emotion, suggesting the avoidance of negative affective states as a coping mechanism putatively associated with war-related trauma. For main effects, partial eta-squared effect sizes ranged from .159 to .573, and effect sizes for interaction effects ranged from .027 to .189, with most effects being in the medium-to-large range. Furthermore, the biases in emotion recognition observed in the present study may reflect gender stereotypes and social norms that shape how individuals perceive and interpret emotional expression in men and women.

Indexed as

EmotionsFacial ExpressionFacial RecognitionRefugeesAdultFemaleHumansMaleMiddle AgedRecognition, PsychologySex FactorsStress Disorders, Post-TraumaticYoung Adult

Identifiers

PMID40947611
PMCPMC12890724

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY
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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.