Abstract:
A common stereotype is that males express fewer emotions than females, though research has found that levels of internal emotional experience are the same for males and females. However, males do appear to have a diminished ability for emotional expression when normative alexithymia levels have been assessed. The aim of the current study was to investigate the relationship between adult attachment style, alexithymia and the working emotional vocabulary, and the role that gender has in these relationships. It was predicted that females would free-list more emotion words than males; higher levels of alexithymia would be associated with insecure adult attachment and fewer free-listed emotion words; and that gender would have a strong moderating role. One hundred and fifty-four participants were given two minutes to list as many words for emotions as they could. Participants then completed measures of adult attachment, alexithymia, and social desirability. As predicted, the females in this study free-listed more emotion words than the males suggesting that the females had access to more psychologically relevant emotion words. Alexithymia was associated with insecure adult attachment, however for males this was only found for avoidant attachment. There was generally no association between emotion words free-listed and alexithymia. Gender had a moderating effect on the relationship between the alexithymic trait of difficulty describing feelings and the number of emotion words-free-listed. Limitations of the study are discussed, however there is support for the proposal that the free listing of emotion words may prove useful for monitoring the progress of emotional literacy training.
Good work, had a read through the thesis, this is interesting stuff.