Alexithymia is associated with a low self-estimatedaffective intensity

Alexithymia is a personality trait initially proposed by Sifneos (1973)in apsychosomatic context. The construct includes two main facets: first, a paucity of verbal reportsby individuals about the feelings and emotions they experience and second, an externallyoriented way of thinking (la pensée opératoire). Affect Intensity (AI) is a concept belonging todifferential psychology. Larsen defined it as a stable individual difference, which is related to thestrength of an individuals affective experiences (Larsen and Diener (1987)). Concerning theinformational style, low AI subjects make fewer references to affect and give more factual detailsin their descriptions (Larsen et al. (1996)). From the similar terms used in the portrait of low AIsubjects and high alexithymic individuals it can be inferred that there is a strong relationshipbetween the two traits. In this research we compare two groups with contrasted degrees ofalexithymia on an evaluative task. Participants were asked to estimate the arousal andagreeableness associated with 32 affective adjectives. The high alexithymic group shows aconstricted intensity of both the arousal and agreeableness dimensions when compared with thelow alexithymic group. We suggest that this result is an effect of a lesser degree of focus onemotional experiences in alexithymia.