Alexithymia and everyday interpersonal emotion regulation

Alexithymia, a multifaceted personality trait characterized by difficulties identifying and describing feelings and an externally oriented thinking style, is linked to social difficulties. Drawing on the extended process model of extrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation (IER), we examined whether higher (vs. lower) levels of alexithymia are associated with differences in how people regulate others' emotions, a pathway that may help explain why alexithymia is linked to social dysfunction. Across two ecological momentary assessment studies (Study 1: Germany, n = 129; Study 2: United States, n = 220; 6028 observations), results revealed distinct patterns of association across alexithymia facets. In both studies, the direction of associations suggested that greater difficulties identifying feelings were associated with higher IER strategy use, with this pattern most apparent for more cognitive and problem-focused strategies versus more emotion-oriented IER. In contrast, greater difficulties describing feelings were consistently linked to lower IER strategy use, whereas externally oriented thinking showed no consistent directional pattern. These findings suggest that alexithymia is associated with differential patterns of IER strategy use, underscoring IER difficulties as an interpersonal process that may contribute to links between alexithymia and social dysfunction. Our results emphasize the importance of considering the multifaceted nature of alexithymia in IER.