Alexithymia is associated with a low self-estimated affective intensity

Alexithymia is a personality trait initially proposed by Sifneos (1973) in a psychosomatic context. The construct includes two main facets: first, a p aucity of verbal reports by individuals about the feelings and emotions the y experience and second, an externally oriented way of thinking ('la pensee operatoire'). Affect Intensity (AI) is a concept belonging tr, differentia l psychology. Larsen defined it as a stable individual difference, which is related to the strength of an individual's affective experiences (Larsen & Diener, 1987). Concerning the informational style, low AI subjects make fe wer references to affect and give more factual details in their description s (Larsen et al., 1996). From the similar terms used in the portrait of low AI subjects and high alexithymic individuals it can be inferred that there is a strong relationship between the two traits, In this research we compa re two groups with contrasted degrees of alexithymia on an evaluative task. Participants were asked to estimate the: arousal and agreeableness associa ted with 32 affective adjectives. The high alexithymic group shows a constr icted intensity of both the arousal and agreeableness dimensions when compa red with the low alexithymic group. We suggest that this result is an effec t of a lesser degree of focus on emotional experiences in alexithymia. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.