Preserved Affective Sharing But Impaired Decoding of Contextual Complex Emotions in Alcohol Dependence Delphine Grynberg, Pierre Maurage, and Jean-Louis Nandrino Background: Prior research has repeatedly shown that alcohol dependence is associated with a large range of impairments in psychological processes, which could lead to interpersonal deficits. Specifically, it has been suggested that these interpersonal difficulties are underpinned by reduced recognition and sharing of others’ emotional states. However, this pattern of deficits remains to be clarified. This study thus aimed to investigate whether alcohol dependence is associated with impaired abilities in decoding contextual complex emotions and with altered sharing of others’ emotions. Methods: Forty-one alcohol-dependent individuals (ADI) and 37 matched healthy individuals com- pleted the Multifaceted Empathy Test, in which they were instructed to identify complex emotional states expressed by individuals in contextual scenes and to state to what extent they shared them. Results: Compared to healthy individuals, ADI were impaired in identifying negative (Cohen’s d = 0.75) and positive (Cohen’s d = 0.46) emotional states but, conversely, presented preserved abilities in sharing others’ emotional states. Conclusions: This study shows that alcohol dependence is characterized by an impaired ability to decode complex emotional states (both positive and negative), despite the presence of complementary contextual cues, but by preserved emotion-sharing. Therefore, these results extend earlier data describ- ing an impaired ability to decode noncontextualized emotions toward contextualized and ecologically valid emotional states. They also indicate that some essential emotional competences such as emotion- sharing are preserved in alcohol dependence, thereby offering potential therapeutic levers. Key Words: Alcohol Dependence, Empathy, Affective Sharing, Emotion, Affective Mental States, Context. A LCOHOL DEPENDENCE IS one of the most com- mon psychiatric disorders worldwide (Harper and Matsumoto, 2005) and leads to cognitive, emotional, and interpersonal deficits (Castellano et al., 2015; Maurage et al., 2011b, 2013a,b; Stavro et al., 2013; Townshend and Duka, 2003; Uekermann and Daum, 2008), the latter being notably related to increased levels of alexithymia (e.g., Taieb et al., 2002), more interpersonal disorders (e.g., Maurage et al., 2009), and lower social responsiveness (Mohagheghi et al., 2015). It has recently been shown that these interpersonal deficits extend to how alcohol-dependent individuals (ADI) decode and respond to others’ mental states (e.g., Maurage et al., 2011a,b; Nandrino et al., 2014). The decoding deficits of ADI are known to be impaired in identifying others’ emotional states. With respect to the the- ory of mind (i.e., inferring other people’s mental states; Pre- mack and Woodruff, 1978), ADI present deficits in understanding affective states (e.g., faux pas, irony) (Amenta et al., 2013; Maurage et al., 2016; Thoma et al., 2013) but with a potential preservation of the abilities related to identi- fying nonaffective states (e.g., false beliefs) (Bosco et al., 2014; Maurage et al., 2016; but for contrasting results, see Maurage et al., 2015), while contradictory results have been found for this ability. On the one hand, ADI are able to cor- rectly understand intentions and thoughts displayed in short videos of social interactions (Maurage et al., 2016) and to correctly perform a short version of the Strange Stories Test (Bosco et al., 2014; Happ e et al., 1999), presenting scenarios that require participants to understand characters’ nonemo- tional mental states (e.g., bluffing, lies, persuasion). On the other hand, some ADI seemed to have impaired abilities in tracking the other person’s mental state in a false belief task (Maurage et al., 2015), while more than 50% of the ADI did not present any deficit on this task. Concerning pictures of mental state expressions, ADI are impaired in decoding basic (e.g., Kornreich et al., 2013; Maurage et al., 2009; Miller et al., 2015) and complex emo- tional states (Maurage et al., 2011a; Nandrino et al., 2014; Thoma et al., 2013) but have preserved abilities in decoding complex nonemotional states (Maurage et al., 2011a). Taken From the Sciences Cognitives et Sciences Affectives (DG, J-LN), CNRS, CHU Lille, UMR 9193, Universit e de Lille, Lille, France; and Laboratory for Experimental Psychopathology (PM), Psychological Science Research Institute, Universit e catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la- Neuve, Belgium. Received for publication September 26, 2016;accepted January 4, 2017. Reprint requests: Delphine Grynberg, PhD, Domaine universitaire du Pont de Bois, Universit e Lille III, BP 149, Villeneuve d’Ascq Cedex 59653, France. Tel.: +33320416966; Fax: +33320416036; E-mail: Delphine.Grynberg@univ-lille3.fr Copyright © 2017 by the Research Society on Alcoholism. DOI: 10.1111/acer.13330 Alcohol Clin Exp Res, Vol 41, No 4, 2017: pp 779–785 779 ALCOHOLISM:CLINICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH Vol. 41, No. 4 April 2017