Emotion Recognition Ability Test Using JACFEE Photos: A Validity/Reliability Study of a War Veterans' Sample and Their Offspring

Emotion recognition is very important for social interaction. Several mental disorders influence facial emotion recognition. War veterans and their offspring are subject to an increased risk of developing psychopathology. Emotion recognition is an important aspect that needs to be addressed in this population. To our knowledge, no test exists that is validated for use with war veterans and their offspring. The current study aimed to validate the JACFEE photo set to study facial emotion recognition in war veterans and their offspring. The JACFEE photo set was presented to 135 participants, comprised of 62 male war veterans and 73 war veterans' offspring. The participants identified the facial emotion presented from amongst the possible seven emotions that were tested for: anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. A loglinear model was used to evaluate whether the agreement between the intended and the chosen emotions was higher than the expected. Overall agreement between chosen and intended emotions was 76.3% (Cohen kappa = 0.72). The agreement ranged from 63% (sadness expressions) to 91% (happiness expressions). The reliability by emotion ranged from 0.617 to 0.843 and the overall JACFEE photo set Cronbach alpha was 0.911. The offspring showed higher agreement when compared with the veterans (RR: 41.52 vs 12.12, p < 0.001), which confirms the construct validity of the test. The JACFEE set of photos showed good validity and reliability indices, which makes it an adequate instrument for researching emotion recognition ability in the study sample of war veterans and their respective offspring.