Effects of alexithymia and its subfactors on emotional response to music

Abstract

Alexithymia is a trait characterized by decreased emotional response to visual or verbal stimuli. However, Lyvers et al. suggest that alexithymia is positively correlated with the magnitude of emotional response to music (ERM). This study reexamines their findings in two sets of Asian population (China [ n = 344] and Japan [ n = 341]) using online surveys to investigate the subfactors of alexithymia. The Toronto Alexithymia Scale and the Geneva Emotional Music Scale (GEMS) were used to measure alexithymia and ERM in the participants, along with trait anxiety and music experiences in their daily lives. The obtained data showed that in both the Chinese and the Japanese populations, individuals with higher alexithymia tend to have higher GEMS scores (i.e., higher ERM), which is consistent with the finding of the previous study. Furthermore, alexithymia and ERM are correlated because of difficulty in identifying feelings, a subfactor of alexithymia. These results were not influenced by trait anxiety. In addition, alexithymia showed no correlation with either the frequency of listening to music or the degree of music absorption in daily life. We argued that the nonverbal characteristic of music might be key to the association between alexithymia and ERM.