Graduation Year
Spring 2012
Document Type
Open Access Senior Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
Psychology
Reader 1
Alan Hartley
Reader 2
Jennifer Ma
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
© 2012 Kate M. Pluth
Abstract
This correlational and experimental study examines how people with different levels of alexithymia and emotional intelligence write about their emotional experiences. Because research on expressive writing (writing about important emotional experiences) has found such far-reaching therapeutic benefits, and attributes much of it to expressive writing's linguistic properties, exploring how a person's emotional understanding relates to language matters. Sixty-eight participants engaged in Pennebaker's expressive writing paradigm, and their word usage was measured on a number of categories, as given by the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program. Results indicated that different levels of emotional intelligence and alexithymia correlated with certain parameters of word usage. However, few relationships were observed between the two attributes and change in word usage over time.
Recommended Citation
Pluth, Kate M., "Alexithymia, Emotional Intelligence, and Their Relation to Word Usage in Expressive Writing" (2012). Scripps Senior Theses. 36.
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/36
Included in
Counseling Psychology Commons, Personality and Social Contexts Commons, Social Psychology Commons
