Alexithymia predicts lower reading frequency: The mediating roles of mentalising ability and reading attitude

Abstract

Some people may avoid reading because they lack the capacity and the motivation to understand the inner thoughts and feelings of the narrator and the characters in a text. Such mentalising problems are associated with alexithymia, a personality dimension that describes individuals who experience difficulties in identifying their emotions and describing what they feel to others and have an externally oriented cognitive style. Individual differences in alexithymia have been widely investigated, but no empirical studies so far have related alexithymia to reading. To fill this gap, we conducted two studies (combined N=687) in which we assessed the links between alexithymia and reading frequency, as assessed by a performance-based task (i.e., a print exposure checklist) and self-report questions. We also assessed reading attitude and mentalising ability as potential mediators of the association between reading frequency and alexithymia. The results showed that alexithymia was consistently associated with less frequent reading, and this relation was mediated by negative reading attitude and lower mentalising ability. These findings indicate that chronic difficulties in emotion processing contribute to individual differences in reading behaviour.