In an extensive review of studies of social cognition in alcoholics, Uekermann and Daum (2008) summarized behavioral findings of diminished social cognitive functioning in alcoholism such as impairments in facial affect perception (as noted above), humor processing (Uekermann et al., 2007), empathy (Maurage et al., 2007; Uekermann et al., 2007), and theory-of-mind (the ability to ascribe mental states to others) (Uekermann et al., 2007). Kornreich et al. (2011) reported that alcoholics demonstrated impaired reasoning for social contract, precaution, and understanding conditional social rules. The alcoholics also had lower emotional intelligence scores, suggesting that these factors contributed to impaired interpersonal functioning. Further, higher levels of alexithymia, characterized by difficulties identifying, differentiating, and expressing feelings, have been reported in alcoholism (Maurage et al., 2011; Stasiewicz et al., 2012), and positive correlations between alexithymia measures and severity of alcohol use have been reported (Thorberg et al., 2011).
