The association between childhood maltreatment and emotion recognition: A systematic review and meta-analysis.
Abstract
Childhood maltreatment is associated with profound and enduring psychological and biological consequences. Among these, impairments in emotion recognition are particularly important, as the ability to recognize emotions is essential for social interaction. This systematic review and meta-analysis examined the relationship between childhood maltreatment and behaviorally assessed emotion recognition in adulthood across 40 studies (N = 6,369), with a focus on emotion-specific effects and subtypes of childhood maltreatment. Using correlated hierarchical effects models and multivariate meta-analytic methods, we found a significant negative group difference in emotion recognition accuracy between individuals with high versus low childhood maltreatment exposure (g = -0.13, p < .05), particularly for neutral (g = -0.27, p < .05) and disgusted expressions (g = -0.32, p < .05). However, no significant associations between childhood maltreatment and emotion recognition accuracy, nor effects for reaction times, were found. These results suggest that childhood maltreatment is linked to subtle, emotion-specific alterations in adult emotion recognition, highlighting its long-term relevance and pointing to a complex, multifactorial relationship shaped by individual and contextual influences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).