Empathy impairments in patients with gambling disorder

In spite of well-documented empathy impairments in substance use disorders and significant overlap in neurobiological and cognitive functioning with behavioral addictions such as gambling disorder (GD), little is known about empathy impairments in GD. The aim of this study was thus to investigate cognitive and emotional empathy and its association with cognitive functioning in GD.

Twenty-five treatment-seeking individuals diagnosed with GD, 25 recently detoxified patients diagnosed with alcohol use disorder (AUD), and 25 healthy controls (HCs) were assessed using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (self-report measure), and the Multifaceted Empathy Test (behavioral measure) to assess cognitive and emotional empathy, along with three clinical and three cognitive measures.

The GD group scored lower on self-report empathy compared to the AUD group. Additionally, using the behavioral measure, the GD group exhibited lower cognitive empathy compared to HCs but intact emotional empathy. The AUD group, on the other hand, showed higher emotional empathy compared to HCs but intact cognitive empathy. The GD group did not differ from HCs on cognitive measures, but they outperformed the AUD group on the cognitive flexibility task. Specific correlations between cognitive and empathy measures were observed in both clinical groups.

The behavioral empathy results showed a dissociation between cognitive and emotional empathy impairments in the two different types of addiction, suggesting distinct foci for therapeutic interventions.