Cognitive Style As An Underlying Mechanism in Association of Internet Overuse and Alexithymia

Abstract

Background – The prevalence of alexithymia (alx) has been reported as approximately 10% among the general population (Aljaffer et al., 2022). Alexithymia is a personality trait characterized by Difficulties in differentiating emotions and insufficient understanding alongside Difficulty verbalising emotions, limited imagination and fantasy; and Thoughts focused primarily on reality combined with a very limited or complete lack of introspection (Kooiman et al., 2002).
Objective – To investigate the underlying mechanism i.e. cognitive styles namely intuitive (int), and systematic (sys) in the relationship between Internet Overuse (Ino) and Alexithymia (alx).
Methods - A sample of 300 young adults aged 18 -30 were selected for the study from different region of Haryana through random sampling. Obtained data was analyzed under mediation analysis using JASP (Version 19).
Results - Result highlighted that both Intuitive and systematic cognitive styles are significantly mediate the relationship between Ino and Alex.
Conclusions – Cognitive styles regardless of its styles mediate the relationship between Ino and alexithymia among young population. The study suggests that positive constructs such as cognitive style with systematic (sys) approach mitigate the adverse effect of Ino over Alex, whereas no such mitigation was observed by intuitive (int) cognitive style for same.