Abstract
Despite decades of speculation, many causal aspects that contribute to the heterogeneity of alexithymia still must be clarified. This study examined the extent of the alexithymia phenotype and its contribution to social function in the general population. In total, 200 participants (females = 111) completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 (TAS-20), multiple self-reporting questionnaires measuring emotion intelligence, empathy, hostility and impulsivity, and the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET). In the multivariate analysis, highly alexithymic individuals appeared to report subjective deficits in emotion recognition and regulation as well as increased impulsivity; however, their empathy skills were intact, and even the proneness to experiencing empathic distress with others’ suffering was increased among alexithymic individuals. We also compared the clinical and behavioral manifestations of highly alexithymic male and female subjects to those of each gender control group. As a result, in contrast to their subjective self-reports of emotion processing impairment, the RMET performance appeared to be preserved in alexithymic females; however, highly alexithymic males showed actual deficits in the emotion identification task. Future research needs to further refine the constructs of alexithymia to incorporate the phenotypic changes in affected individuals in relation to measuring instruments, the extent of empathic distress, and gender.
Highlights
IntroductionIndividuals with a high degree of alexithymia are reported to have more dysfunction in coping with daily stressors and to be more vulnerable to mental illnesses [7,8,9,10]
Alexithymia was coined by Sifneos [1] to denote a stable, dimensional psychological construct that includes difficulties in identifying, describing, and distinguishing emotions and an externally oriented thought style [2, 3]
Behavioral and Clinical Characteristics MANOVA was used to determine whether there was a significant difference in dependent variables (RMET, emotional quotient (EQ), Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory (BDHI), Barratt Impulsiveness Scale-11Revised (BIS) scores) between alexithymic and non-alexithymic participants (Wilks’ lambda = 0.78, F(12, 187) = 4.51, P
Summary
Individuals with a high degree of alexithymia are reported to have more dysfunction in coping with daily stressors and to be more vulnerable to mental illnesses [7,8,9,10]. Newly accumulated findings, to which various research methods have been applied, have begun to neutralize the hypothesis of social dysfunction in alexithymia [9]. Behavioral evidence has demonstrated that social cognition in individuals with alexithymia is quite intact [11,12,13,14]. In accordance with this finding, emotion perception deficits in alexithymia, once considered relatively reliable features, have become controversial issues [15, 16]
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