People with psychosis have a deficit in emotion recognition, what has been mainly studied in schizophrenia. However, there are little published data about reactions to emotional facial expression and its relationship with the performance in emotion recognition tasks.

To assess the emotional reactivity to faces and the recognition of emotions in people with an acute psychotic episode.

To determine if there is a relationship between emotional reactivity to faces and emotional perception in people with psychosis.

22 people -14 male (mean age 37,57;SD10,46) and 8 females(49,57;SD13.23)- with an acute psychotic episode (DSM-IV-TR) were asked to assess 20 faces from The Emotion Recognition-40 using the Self Assessment Manikin. Then, faces were projected again, asking the participants identify the emotion expressed in each image.

Valence in Anger correlates with Correct Identification (CI) of anger (τ=0.379;p=0.015). Arousal in Anger with CI of anger (τ=0.356;p=0.021) and with False Positive (FP) of anger (τ=-0.415;p=0.012). Valence in fear with CI anger (τ=0.335;p=0.023). Arousal in fear with FP anger (τ=-0.385;p=0.018). Valence in No Emotion with FP Sadness (τ=-0.38;p=0.012), FP anger (τ=-0.479;p=0.004), FP fear (τ=-0.332;p=0.013) and CI no emotion (τ=0.575;p=0.000). Arousal in No Emotion with CI anger (τ=0.50;p=0.002). Every correlation was still significant when controlling diagnosis, except arousal in anger and FP anger.

Results indicate a probable relationship between the way people with psychosis react to a fearful, angry or non emotional face and the emotion they attribute to it.