I saw this article yesterday and found it interesting: http://psychcentral.com/news/2013/02...ies/51409.html

It suggests that bipolar patients have similar emotional perception difficulties to schizophrenic patients.

It made me think about my own experiences and whether or not I really do have problems identifying emotion based on facial expressions. Maybe I do, like the article says, take longer to establish a person's emotional response. In fact, it would explain why I feel uncomfortable in a lot of social situations. You have to be able to assess someone's facial expression in order to behave appropriately in a social setting, right? So if it takes longer for me to do that, it would make sense that I find social interactions exhausting (What do I say now? What's she expecting my answer to be? How do I respond to that questions? What should I ask in return??)--like so much work--I'd rather sit alone by myself for ours. I hadn't thought about this possible connection before. Now that I think back on it, I think this might be true for me to some degree.

What do you think? I know many of us find socializing difficult and tiring...near impossible at times. Do you think part of the reason could be this difficulty in determining emotion from facial cues?