Expressive writing and the role of alexythimia as a dispositional deficit in self-disclosure and psychological health.
Psychology students were randomly assigned to a condition in which they had to write for 20 min on 3 days or for 3 min on 1 day a factual description of disclosed traumas, undisclosed traumas, or recent social events. In the case of undisclosed traumatic events, intensive writing about these events showed a beneficial effect on affect and on the affective impact of remembering the event and appraisal. Participants who wrote briefly about an undisclosed traumatic event showed a more negative appraisal. Participants who wrote intensively about a traumatic event and had a dispositional deficit in self-disclosure, measured by a Toronto Alexithymia Scale subscale, showed a positive effect on self-reported measures of affect. Difficulty in describing feelings, an alexythimia dimension, correlated with psychological health problems, emotional inhibition, and a less introspective content of written essays about the emotional events.
Páez
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Department of Social Psychology, University of the Basque Country, San Sebastián, Spain. pspparod@ss.ehu.es
Velasco
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González
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D000328:Adult; D000342:Affective Symptoms / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008603:Mental Health; D012650:Self Disclosure; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires