Intérêts et enjeux de l’évaluation de la reconnaissance des émotions chez les auteurs d’infractions à caractère sexuel (AICS)

Abstract

IntroductionThe communication of emotions is moderated through self-regulation including emotion regulation. It seems fundamental to correctly interpret social cues like face, voice or body expressions. According to a prominent hypothesis, an accurate recognition of emotional cues is correlated with empathic skills and manifestation of prosocial behaviours. However, while research have been undertaken towards specific populations in the forensic psychiatry field, little is known concerning the ability to recognize emotions among sexual offenders. ObjectivesOur first objective is to highlight, through a literature review, the interests and issues of research in this domain. Secondly, on the base of preliminary meta-analysis results on the recognition of facial expressions of emotions (FEE), we draw future perspectives in the fields of research, evaluation and therapeutic outcomes. Future perspectives and ConclusionThe creation of innovative experimental design, followed by the implementation and validation of a battery on the recognition of emotions (unimodal and multimodal) is essential. This will allow researchers and clinicians to assess sexual offenders on this specific ability, which is related to the enhancement of prosocial behaviours.