Abstract

Alexithymia conceptualizes difficulty in identifying and expressing emotion. The level of alexithymia can be affected by both personal characteristics and cultural background, and age is related to both domains of the factors. Considering different sociocultural backgrounds between generations due to radical changes in Korean society has gone through during a relatively short period of time, it is expected to find differences in the level of alexithymia between generations. This study, using a psychometric model, compared the levels of alexithymia, measured by the Korean version of the 20-item Toronto alexithymia scale (TAS-20K), between groups of young (20-30s) and middle-aged (50-60s) adults. For a valid comparison, TAS-20K should measure the same construct in the two groups, so we checked measurement invariance between the groups with the multi-group factor analytic model and alignment method. Our results show that 2-factor models consisted of difficulty identifying and expressing emotion (DIDF) and externally-oriented thinking (EOT) in both groups. The invariance was satisfied for the factor loadings but not for the intercepts between the groups. Under approximate invariance, the young adult group showed a significantly higher level of DIDF. This can be a result of both cognitive maturation and the change in value system. In addition, the results showed that TAS-20K measures similar construct in both age groups but still requires a revision for some items.