Mediating Effect Of Trait Affection On Relationship Between Alexithymia And Fear Of Intimacy

Intimacy is quite close to college students, whether or not can they set up and maintain romantic relationship with others is a hot topic that college students really concern, and the problems in intimacy probably have negative affect on their life.Alexithymia, trait affection and fear of intimacy are all factors about affection expression which have a lot to do with intimacy, but the relationship among them still need to be studied.The Trait Affection Scale (TAS) has been revised on the basis of relative literature in the study, the revised TAS combined with Toronto Alexithymia Scale(TAS-20) and Fear of Intimacy Scale (FIS) were used to investigate the situation and features of 635 college students in Nanjing, Beijing and Xian. The purpose is to explore the relationship among alexithymia, trait affection and fear of intimacy,especially the mediating role of trait affection on the relationship between alexithymia and fear of intimacy, and a model has been built according to the results. What is more, the dyadic relationship between campus couples about the three factors has been analyzed. Alexithymia was combined with interpersonal issues and a new variable-trait affection was brought up which aimed to reveal the influence that affection expression ability and tendency can have on fear of intimacy, hoping that the results would provide some references to college students' self-growth and psychological consultation. The results revealed that:1. The revised TAS is composed of 13 items including affection given, affection received, general appraisal 3 factors. And it has good reliability and validity in college students.2. For all the scores of alexithymia and its 3 dimensions, there were significant differences on profession, grade, and the duration of romantic relationship now, but there is no significantly differences on gender, hometown, whether or not being from one-child family, whether or not have had romantic relationships and whether or not being in romantic relationship now.3. For all the scores of trait affection and its 3 dimensions, there were significant differences on gender, whether or not have had romantic relationships, and whether or not being in romantic relationship now, but there is no significantly differences on profession, grade, hometown, whether or not being from one-child family, and the duration of romantic relationship now.4. For the scores of fear of intimacy, there were significantly differences on grade, whether or not have had romantic relationships, and the duration of romantic relationship now, but there were no significantly differences on gender, profession,hometown, whether or not being from one-child family and whether or not being in romantic relationship now.5. Alexithymia is significantly positively correlated with fear of intimacy, and has positive predicted function on fear of intimacy; Alexithymia is significantly negatively correlated with trait affection, and has negative predicted function on trait affection; Trait affection is significantly negatively correlated with fear of intimacy,and has negative predicted function on fear of intimacy. What is more, alexithymia and trait affection can work together to predict fear of intimacy.6. Trait affection plays a partly mediating role on the relationship between alexithymia and fear of intimacy, in other words, alexithymia have an indirect effect on fear of intimacy via trait affection.7. For postgraduate couples, there was no significant relationship between males' alexithymia and females' fear of intimacy, that is to say, there was no dyadic relationship between campus couples on alexithymia and fear of intimacy.