[quote]Aragorn wrote:
Glad you got an A+ on the paper! That kicks ass. I assume this is not your test but merely a convenient online link, and that is fine. However I don’t like it at all. Correlation of “sex as a recreational activity” with alexithymia is very poor. The question is broad, undefined, and may mean different things to different people–particularly people who do not approve of promiscuity. It does not correlate to “disinterest” or “difficulties”, and similar questions are equally poor in my view. Likewise you (general “you” not “you” Beth) neglect to define whether people are capable of analyzing the test taker’s feelings or whether reticence to share feelings is based on a lack of trust of the other person. Even the other person’s inability to function intellectually at a level satisfactory to the test taker for being told feelings. Perhaps that is part of alexithymia, I do not know. However to me it makes sense that a person only tells emotions to people they deem “worthy” or reliable sources of advice.
If this is the case a number of people would score high on alexithymia based on their feelings that the people around them are not reliable advice givers–this then makes them uncomfortable in talking about said emotions. I personally do not take musical advice from anybody who likes Justin Bieber, and I don’t take lifting advice from people without experience. Similarly I imagine a lot of people (men probably more so) don’t share feelings to people they deem unreliable. I think this is probably even more pronounced for very intellectually developed people, although I can’t prove that, and would not in my layperson’s view be a proper symptom of alexithymia.
Further there needs to be more differentiation between an “externally oriented thinker” and what you are testing. In other words, you need to define–either with more questions or more specific questions–whether the person has an actual difficulty thinking about about their feelings or whether they do not have a difficulty but rather are more “mission” oriented in their thinking processes during the active portion of the day. The two are non-equivalent.
Finally, dream frequency and quality is extremely correlated with sleep quality. A person who does not get good sleep will score one way here not because of alexithymic qualities but because their sleep quality is routinely lacking or disturbed.
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Aragorn,
This is a really thoughtful post, and points out a lot of the difficulties with trying to conduct research on the very, very fuzzy topic of mental processes. It’s very easy to develop survey questions that don’t test what you think they test. Some of the questions are not going to be well understood, or could be interpreted in various ways by different people.
Besides, alexithymia is a theoretical construct. It’s really just an idea that a collection of personality traits or patterns of behavior can or should be related in some way and categorized as “alexithymia”. You may, or may not, think this is plausible or helpful to you. You may find other ways to describe these behaviors, or reject the idea that they are part of the same “dimensional personality trait”. Even if you do find it helpful, you could be asking the wrong survey questions, or wording them in an ambiguous way.
The idea behind the survey is that these questions might be indicators. It’s possible that some of these traits are unrelated. It’s also likely that individuals with some of these patterns of behavior would also meet the diagnostic criterion for other disorders such as depression, or as you mentioned, sleep disorders, among others. Also, some individuals might experience these traits in a transitory way, where other people might feel they are more enduring over time.
That doesn’t mean it isn’t interesting to think about, but trying to be scientific about it is difficult. Hopefully nobody takes it too seriously. I say that with no disrespect to Beth, who is doing some informal research for a paper. She may find it helpful to try to understand some personality characteristics in herself, or others by categorizing them in this way. That’s how humans roll. Categorizing and labeling things is a big part of how we make sense of the world.
Best,
Puff