Marialaura Di Tella, Agata Benfante, Lorys Castelli, Mauro Adenzato, Rita B. Ardito

Key words: alexithymia; social cognition; theory of mind; emotion recognition; empathy; systematic review

Objective: This systematic review summarises the studies that have investigated the relationship between dimensions of social cognition (i.e., Theory of Mind – ToM, emotion recognition, and empathy) and alexithymia in the general adult non-clinical population.

Method: PubMed, PsycINFO, and Scopus databases were screened, using the following strings: ("alexithymi*") AND ("theory of mind" OR "ToM"); ("alexithymi*") AND ("empath*"); ("alexithymi*") AND ("emotion recognition"); ("alexithymi*") AND ("social cognition").

Results: A total of 117 studies met the inclusion criteria and were included in this review. The total number of participants included in the reviewed studies was 40,231. Mixed results were found for alexithymia and ToM, while the relationship between emotion recognition or empathy and alexithymia was more homogeneous. Alexithymia was found to be significantly associated with both a reduced ability to recognise emotions and empathy.

Conclusions: These results support the existence of significant relationships between alexithymia and altered social cognitive abilities. Future research is needed to confirm the present findings and further elucidate the complex relationship between these processes. Suggestions are made on how to overcome some of the theoretical and methodological problems in the literature.