Felix Acuna

Date of Award

2012

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Bauer, Gordon

Keywords

Alexithymia, Trust, Altruism

Area of Concentration

Psychology

Abstract

The current study sought to examine relationships among alexithymia or diminished engagement with one's emotions, altruism, and first-hand interpersonal trust (FIT). Three questionnaires were administered to 61 participants in order to examine potential relationships among the variables in question. FIT was measured using the added scores of two factors present in a generalized trust measure. Three hypotheses were advanced: (1) alexithymia is negatively related to first-hand generalized trust; (2) altruism is positively related to first-hand generalized trust; (3) alexithymia predicts first-hand generalized trust to a higher extent than altruism. None of the hypotheses were confirmed. However, subsequent analyses showed a negative correlation between first-hand interpersonal trust and “externally oriented thinking”, a subcomponent of the alexithymia scale used in this study. Results show that individuals' tendency to devalue their inner emotional life in their habitual thinking is associated with higher levels of mistrust. It is suggested that future studies on alexithymia look at the role of attributions to physiological arousal in the formation of social attitudes.

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