title: The cultural shaping of alexithymia: values and externally oriented thinking in a Chinese clinical sample.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Alexithymia is a multi-faceted personality construct characterized by difficulties in identifying and describing emotional states. Originally based on observations of American psychosomatic patients, the construct is now studied in a variety of cultural contexts. However, few studies have critically examined alexithymia from a cultural perspective. Dere et al. [1] recently found support for the hypothesis that one alexithymia component - externally oriented thinking (EOT) - is linked to cultural values, among Euro-Canadian and Chinese-Canadian students. The current study examines this association in a Chinese clinical sample.
  
  
  METHODS
  Outpatients presenting at three hospital-based psychology clinics in Hunan province, China (N=268) completed a structured clinical interview and self-report measures of alexithymia and cultural values. All participants endorsed clinically significant levels of depressed mood, anhedonia, and/or fatigue.
  
  
  RESULTS
  As expected, EOT was negatively predicted by Modernization and Euro-American values. Two other alexithymia components, difficulty identifying feelings and difficulty describing feelings, were unrelated to cultural values.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These findings suggest that cultural variations in the importance placed on emotional experience must be taken into account in cross-cultural alexithymia research. Such studies should also consider separately the specific components of alexithymia; failure to do so can lead to overestimation of alexithymia in groups where scores are driven by culturally-promoted EOT.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Concordia University, Montréal, Québec, Canada. jessicadere@gmail.com
authors.forename: Jessica
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Dere
authors.forename: Qiuping
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.forename: Xiongzhao
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Lin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Cai
authors.forename: Shuqiao
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yao
authors.forename: Andrew G
authors.initials: AG
authors.lastname: Ryder
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000342:Affective Symptoms / Q000523:psychology*; D002681:China; D003469:Culture; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010555:Personality Inventory; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012945:Social Values; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013850:Thinking