Bullying and alexithymia: Are there differences between traditional, cyber, combined bullies, and nonbullies in reading their own emotions?

Abstract

Alexithymia is thus likely to be an important factor to consider in prevention and treatment of bullying. We recommend that prevention programmes include elements to help identify and describe one's own emotions, providing additional support, and "training" if alexithymia is identified. When young people use cyber techniques and traditional bullying methods, it seems likely that they will have greatest need in this respect.

Do Emotional Components of Alexithymia Mediate the Interplay between Cyberbullying Victimization and Perpetration?

“…The third hypothesis had support, where alexithymia was positively correlated with cyberbullying perpetration. This finding is in line with previous work [ 20 , 26 ] and theoretically with the General Aggression Model [ 21 ] that postulates that personality traits contribute to aggressive behaviors in humans. Among some adolescents, alexithymia facilitates interpersonal problems, uncontrolled emotional responses, expressions of anger, and aggressive behavior, which has been broadly shown in other studies on the associations between alexithymia and aggressive behavior [ 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 ].…”

“…Furthermore, core characteristics of alexithymia include a lack of social attachment and social skills, which might further contribute to the association between alexithymia and cyberbullying perpetration [ 13 , 17 ]. Indeed, initial research has shown that both traditional and cyber bullies show higher levels of alexithymia [ 20 , 26 ].…”

Cross-National Associations Among Cyberbullying Victimization, Self-Esteem, and Internet Addiction: Direct and Indirect Effects of Alexithymia

“…Past research showed that age, sex, and cyberbullying perpetration is correlated with cyberbullying victimization and alexithymia (Tokunaga, 2010;Brody and Vangelisti, 2017;Wachs et al, 2017;Wachs and Wright, 2018).…”

Child-to-Parent Violence and Parenting Styles: Its Relations to Problematic Use of Social Networking Sites, Alexithymia, and Attitude towards Institutional Authority in Adolescence

“…The term alexithymia is used to describe disturbance in affect regulation characterized by a difficulty in identifying and verbalizing differentiated feelings, a way of thinking which focuses primarily on the actual aspects of external circumstances rather than subjective experiences and by a limited fantasy life (Kooiman et al, 2004). It has been found that alexithymia plays an important role in the links between inadequate parenting and adjustment problems (Taylor & Bagby, 2012;Van der Velde et al, 2013), such as the expression of violent behavior (Wachs & Wright, 2018) and, in particular, dating violence (Moral de la Rubia & Ramos-Basurto, 2015), cyberbullying and cybervictimization (Aricak & Ozbay, 2016), and CPV (Lozano- Martínez, Estévez, & Carballo-Crespo, 2013). However, there are few studies in which implications of parenting styles in alexithymia, especially in community samples, are examined.…”