Social cognition and problematic alcohol use: An organizing theoretical framework and suggestions for future work

A systematic review of the acute effects of alcohol on emotion recognition of facial expressions

“… j The authors did not report whether the beverage was a placebo or no‐alcohol control beverage. Most other researchers have interpreted it to be placebo 28,30,46 …”

“…Future studies should consistently report reliability estimates for emotion recognition outcome variables. Further, most (16 of the 19) studies used emotion recognition tasks that asked participants to categorise facial expressions by choosing from a list of emotion labels, but these tasks have been criticised for ignoring the importance of language in affecting emotion perception 46,76–78 . Future studies should consider using emotion recognition tasks that avoid emotion labels as response options, although it is interesting that none of the three studies that used alternate (i.e., non‐language‐based) response options (e.g., matching facial expression images) found effects of alcohol on emotion recognition 54–56 .…”

“…Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the emotion recognition tasks used across all 19 of these studies have been criticised for lacking ecological validity. These tasks do not require participants to actually interact with other people but to rather sit alone in a laboratory room and make inferences based on pictures or videos of facial expressions, which is not how alcohol consumption 11,12 or emotion recognition 46 , 78,79 works in the real world. Future studies that assess the effects of alcohol on emotion recognition during real‐time social encounters are needed 80 …”

“…We systematically reviewed alcohol administration studies and found no consistent effects of any dosage of alcohol on recognition of any emotion. Further research is needed to clarify the underlying mechanisms explaining alcohol's effects on positive and negative social behaviours (e.g., changes in empathy and/or theory of mind) 46 , 81,82 …”

“…It is also possible that alcohol's effects on emotion recognition may differ for males and females, but this too has produced mixed findings (e.g., 29,40 ). Although prior studies have shown that males and females differ in their emotion recognition abilities, with females typically demonstrating better emotion recognition than males (e.g., 41–45 ), it is unclear whether alcohol differentially affects emotion recognition across sexes, which could have important clinical implications 46 . In summary, the impact of alcohol on emotion recognition remains uncertain, including the specific nature of its effects and potential differences in alcohol's effects on emotion recognition based on sex.…”