Alexithymia and Empathy in Parent-Youth Dyads: An Actor-Partner Interdependence Model Analysis

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Social Psychology

Background:

• Parent-child interactions are crucial for social-emotional development.
• Parental alexithymia (difficulty identifying/describing emotions) is linked to offspring's social-emotional abilities.
• The bidirectional influence of alexithymia and empathy within parent-youth dyads remains under-explored.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the actor and partner effects of alexithymia on empathy in college students and their parents.
• To examine how individual alexithymia and empathy relate to each other (actor effects).
• To explore how one individual's alexithymia influences the other's empathy (partner effects).

Main Methods:

• Employed an actor-partner interdependence model (APIM).
• Analyzed self-report data on alexithymia and empathy from 1058 parent-youth dyads.
• Focused on college students and their parents.

Main Results:

• Significant actor effects: alexithymia negatively associated with cognitive empathy for both parents and students.
• No actor effects found for affective empathy.
• Significant partner effects: sons' alexithymia linked to fathers' cognitive empathy; mothers' alexithymia linked to sons' affective empathy.

Conclusions:

• Alexithymia significantly impacts cognitive empathy at both individual and dyadic levels within parent-youth relationships.
• The influence of alexithymia on affective empathy is more complex and dyad-specific.
• Findings underscore the interconnectedness of social-affective abilities in families and inform interventions.