Alexithymia and stimulus augmenting/reducing.

Alexithymia is thought to be a trait that predisposes individuals to psychosomatic and drug abuse disorders. It was hypothesized that alexithymic characteristics would lead an individual to augment stimuli in order to prevent ignoring stimuli that might be dangerous. Subjects (N = 175) were administered alexithymia and augmenting-reducing questionnaires. These concepts were related as expected for male, but not female, subjects. In addition, it was found that alexithymic characteristics in general, rather than a specific difficulty in discriminating physical and emotional stimuli, contributed to this relationship.