Associations of state and trait empathy with daily alcohol use

Abstract

Background: A growing literature documents associations between lower trait empathy and heavier alcohol use and more alcohol problems in adolescent and young adult samples. Prior work linking empathy and alcohol use/problems in these populations has thus far focused on trait rather than state empathy, and researchers often do not differentiate between cognitive and affective empathy. Further, no prior studies have examined associations between daily fluctuations in state empathy and alcohol use. The goal of the current study is to advance knowledge about the associations between state (vs. trait) and cognitive (vs. affective) empathy and alcohol use.Methods: Adult alcohol drinkers (n = 492; M age = 22.89, SD = 5.53; 53.70% female) participated in ecological momentary assessment studies for 7 to 10 days (day n = 4683). Multilevel hurdle models were used to investigate associations between day-level state empathy and daily alcohol use at the within-person level, and associations between individual differences in trait empathy and alcohol use across days at the between-person level.Results: Higher day-level state affective empathy was not associated with the likelihood of drinking on a particular day, but it was significantly associated with a greater number of drinks consumed on alcohol-consuming days, with the latter associations remaining after controlling for day-level positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA).No associations were found for day-level state cognitive empathy, or trait affective or cognitive empathy.Conclusions: On drinking days, when individuals reported more affective empathy than is typical for them, they were more likely to consume a greater number of alcoholic drinks, results that remained when controlling for levels of PA and NA. Daily shifts in affective empathy may be important to consider in efforts to understand alcohol use.

Associations between alcohol consumption and empathy in a non-clinical sample: drinking motives as a moderator

“…Both routes concretize into prosocial behavior, specifically, helping that is seemingly lower in people that drink more. Thereby the resulting lower behavioral empathy might be associated with more drinking early on, suggesting that cognitive and affective pathways might become altered by alcohol in time 31 . Past studies have found both affective 22 and cognitive empathy to be low in people with AUD 26 .…”

“…In line with findings in AUD populations, one meta-analysis that examined non-clinical samples found an association between lower ToM and more alcohol related problems 30 . Additionally, experimental studies in non-AUD individuals have found that drinking alcohol can have acute negative effects on social cognition processes such as facial emotion recognition, empathy and ToM (for a review, see 31 ). Consequently, low cognitive empathy (for example, due to a deficit in facial emotion recognition) can contribute to interpersonal distress, and in turn this can contribute to drinking to cope with negative affect associated with the distress 4 .…”