L’Empathie Cognitive et Emotionnelle chez les Patients Alcoolo-Dépendants (ADs): une Revue de la Littérature

peer reviewedThe purpose of this article is to assert the current state of the scientific literature on the issues regarding empathy in alcohol-dependents patients (ADs). We will first explain what the term « empathy » covers and the distinction made between cognitive and emotional empathy. We will describe then the different studies that got interested in the capacities for empathy in ADs patients. These studies concern predominantly one precise aspect of cognitive empathy: the capacity to infer an emotional state on the basis of emotional facial expressions (EFEs). Up to now, the other domain of cognitive empathy –the decoding of affective prosody and of nonverbal mulimodal stimuli and the attribution of intentions and beliefs– and emotional empathy are under-investigated in alcohol-dependence. In this review of the literature, we will identify the consequences that empathy problems could have on interpersonal relationships as well as the domains that still have to be to investigate regarding empathy in ADs patients, and notably the remediation of these deficits