La cognition sociale, et plus spécifiquement la reconnaissance des émotions, a très peu été étudiée par les auteurs d’infractions à caractère sexuel (AICS). Cet article identifie les enjeux de ce domaine particulier de recherche. Nous nous appuierons sur les résultats préliminaires d’une méta-analyse concernant la reconnaissance des expressions faciales émotionnelles chez les AICS. Cette dernière souligne un déficit de reconnaissance spécifique des émotions négatives.

The 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.

Our 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.

The 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.