Sexual offending represents a significant societal burden and a critical public health concern due to its devastating impact on victims. Extensive research on the etiology and maintenance of sexual offending has led to the development of several hypotheses. Among these, a compelling hypothesis suggests that a putative deficit in emotional recognition skills may underlie the genesis of aggressive behavior, including acts of sexual assault against both adults and children. However, previous studies have reported heterogeneity in emotion recognition skills across different subtypes of offending behavior.

The aim of this systematic review was to determine whether adult sexual offenders (ASO), pedophile diagnosed offenders (PED), and pedophile non-diagnosed offenders (N-PED) share a common deficit in facial emotion recognition.

A systematic literature search was conducted using the PRISMA guidelines. A total of 13 studies were included that met the following inclusion criteria: inclusion of sex offenders and a control group, and original measurement of facial emotion recognition using a validated face battery.

The results indicate a reduced ability to recognize facial emotions in ASO offenders. However, no differences emerged between PED and N-PED offenders and controls. Moreover, this review highlights the difficulties of homogenizing and implementing a systematic assessment of the sex offender population. Factors such as psychiatric/personality disorders, medications and victim characteristics have been particularly understudied in relation to offender etiology and their potential influence on emotional processing. We have therefore formulated basic recommendations for systematizing sexual offender screening in future studies investigating emotional processing in forensic populations.