Empathy and social problem solving in alcohol dependence, mood disorders and selected personality disorders

Nice or effective? Social problem solving strategies in patients with major depressive disorder

“…This confirms earlier findings emphasizing a role of executive function in social problem solving (Channon, 2004;Channon and Crawford, 2010;Thoma et al, 2013). Our results add to this by revealing a specific association of cognitive flexibility with the ability to generate optimal solutions but not with the capacity to merely identify these solutions among alternatives.…”

“…Interestingly, cognitive empathy, i.e. the ability to identify another person's feelings, appears to be spared, while emotional empathy is altered: MDD patients experience more personal distress in response to other people`s negative emotions (see Thoma et al, 2013). Neuroimaging studies suggest enhanced activation to socioemotional information in limbic and other emotion-processing structures, such as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the amygdala, during acute depression (see Cusi et al, 2012).…”

“…Mentalizing and empathy constitute major prerequisites for socially skilled behaviour (Thoma et al, 2013). More specifically, social problem solving, which represents the central concept investigated in this paper, refers to the ability to detect an interpersonal conflict and to choose effective and adaptive strategies for overcoming it (D'Zurilla and Nezu, 1990).…”

Psychopathy, narcissism, and borderline personality: A critical test of the affective empathy-impairment hypothesis

“…Although some have noted similarities among psychopathy, narcissism, and borderline personality (Furnham et al, 2013;Huchzermeier et al, 2007;Miller et al, 2010;Murphy & Vess, 2003;Thoma, Friedmann, & Suchan, 2013), they are typically treated as distinct in the literature. Psychopathy refers to a higher-order personality construct characterized by emotional callousness, egocentricity, deceptive and manipulative interpersonal style, and tendency to engage in antisocial behavior that is rash, erratic, and impulsive (Hare, 1996;Hare & Neumann, 2009;Vitacco, Neumann, & Jackson, 2005).…”

Psychological and Neurobiological Precursors of Alcohol Use Disorders in High-Risk Youth

“…High-risk offspring show atypical neural activation when viewing emotional faces [39,69–71], and neural activation to emotionally-valenced words among high-risk offspring is related to problem drinking in adolescence [72]. Several aspects of social cognition have been shown to relate to the onset and course of alcohol use disorders, such that poorer social cognition predicts early alcohol and drug use, greater severity of AUD, and poorer treatment outcomes [73–75]. However, most research on social cognition in high-risk youth has focused on fMRI paradigms involving passive viewing of emotional faces, and future research with an expanded range of ecologically valid experimental paradigms is needed to determine the extent of social cognition deficits in high-risk offspring.…”