The influence of alcohol on judgement of facial expression of emotion.

Abstract

Despite considerable research into the effects of alcohol on behaviour, there appears to be little information available about the influence of alcohol on interpersonal judgement. An experiment was carried out to test the hypothesis that alcohol would affect subjects' ability to judge facial expressions of emotion. Thirty male and 30 female normal social drinkers were allocated at random to high alcohol, low alcohol or placebo conditions and were shown photographs of faces displaying basic emotions. As predicted, subjects in the high alcohol condition made more errors and subjects in the low alcohol condition fewer errors than subjects in the placebo condition. Accuracy of judgement also varied significantly according to the sex of the subject and the category of emotion being judged. In particular, alcohol was associated with greater impairment of judgements of anger than of other emotions. The clinical implications of the findings are discussed in relation to the association between alcohol and violence, and the use of social skills training with problem drinkers.