Alcohol intoxication is linked to negative social behaviors, but the mechanisms underlying this relationship are poorly understood. We investigated the effects of high-dose alcohol intoxication on the ability to perceive a range of basic emotions (sad, happy, anger, disgust, fear, and surprise) of different intensities, and on self-appraisals of emotion perception ability (i.e., metacognitive judgments). Sixty-four participants consumed either an alcohol or placebo beverage. An emotion recognition task was used to assess emotion perception ability, and participants provided confidence ratings when providing each emotion recognition response. Alcohol-intoxicated individuals demonstrated a reduced ability to detect fear and sadness at moderate-to-high levels of emotion intensity and less overall insight into their ability to recognize emotions. These results provide new insights into the possible difficulties experienced by alcohol-intoxicated individuals in perceiving emotions in others and the limited capacity to monitor their emotion perception abilities, both of which may contribute to inappropriate social responding.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	alcohol intoxication, emotion perception, social cognition, metacognition, facial expression
Research Division:	Psychology
Research Group:	Biological psychology
Research Field:	Behavioural neuroscience
Objective Division:	Health
Objective Group:	Clinical health
Objective Field:	Clinical health not elsewhere classified
UTAS Author:	Honan, C (Dr Cynthia Honan)
UTAS Author:	Skromanis, S (Ms Sarah Skromanis)
UTAS Author:	Palmer, MA (Associate Professor Matt Palmer)
ID Code:	123590
Year Published:	2017
Web of Science® Times Cited:	4
Deposited By:	Psychology
Deposited On:	2018-01-12
Last Modified:	2018-07-26
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