Record Details
Alexithymia in Men: How and When Do Emotional Processing Deficiencies Occur?
ScholarsArchive at Oregon State University
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Title | Alexithymia in Men: How and When Do Emotional Processing Deficiencies Occur? |
| Names |
Levant, Ronald F.
(creator) Allen, Philip A. (creator) Lien, Mei-Ching (creator) |
| Date Issued | 2014-07 (iso8601) |
| Note | This is an author's peer-reviewed final manuscript, as accepted by the publisher. The published article is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association and can be found at: http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/men/index.aspx |
| Abstract | The present study extended existing research on alexithymia in men, investigating whether the deficit in processing emotions occurs early in the process, as a result of dissociation or repression, or later, as a result of suppression. We also examined the assumption in Levant’s (2011) normative male alexithymia hypothesis that men with alexithymia would show the greatest deficits in identifying words for emotions discouraged by masculine norms that expressed vulnerability and attachment. Study 1, with 258 college men, showed that scores on measures of alexithymia and normative male alexithymia were more strongly and uniquely predicted by suppression than repression and dissociation, while controlling for positive and negative affect and depression. Study 2 used semantic priming with 85 college men, and revealed that men with alexithymia showed more errors in lexical decision performance using target emotion words discouraged by masculine norms as compared to men without alexithymia. In addition, men with and without alexithymia did not differ in their accuracy using target emotion words that are encouraged by masculine norms. We also found that the disruption in emotional processing among men with alexithymia occurred at 500 ms stimulus onset asynchrony, which is slow enough for conscious processing, supporting an explanation of suppression as the mechanism for the inhibition. |
| Genre | Article |
| Topic | Normative Male Alexithymia |
| Identifier | Levant, R. F., Allen, P. A., & Lien, M.-C. (2014). Alexithymia in men: How and when do emotional processing deficiencies occur? Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 15(3), 324-334. doi:10.1037/a0033860 |
