Yöyen E, Kılıç AR. Mediating role of self-esteem in the relationship between parental disapproval of the child and alexithymic personality. World J Psychiatry 2025; 15(2): 100135 [DOI: 10.5498/wjp.v15.i2.100135]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Elif Yöyen, Assistant Professor, MD, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Sakarya University, Esentepe, No. 2 Ring Road, Sakarya 54050, Türkiye. elifyoyen@sakarya.edu.tr
Research Domain of This Article
Psychology, Clinical
Article-Type of This Article
Observational Study
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Psychiatry. Feb 19, 2025; 15(2): 100135 Published online Feb 19, 2025. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v15.i2.100135
Mediating role of self-esteem in the relationship between parental disapproval of the child and alexithymic personality
Elif Yöyen, Ali Rıfat Kılıç
Elif Yöyen, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Sakarya University, Sakarya 54050, Türkiye
Ali Rıfat Kılıç, Department of Clinical Psychology, Institute of Social Sciences, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Göztepe, Marmara University, İstanbul 34722, Türkiye
Co-first authors: Elif Yöyen and Ali Rıfat Kılıç.
Author contributions: Yöyen E and Kılıç AR designed and coordinated the study, they contributed equally to this manuscript as co-first authors, performed the experiments, and acquired and analyzed the data; Yöyen E wrote the manuscript; and all authors approved the final version of the article.
Institutional review board statement: The study was approved by Marmara University Social Sciences Research Ethics Committee (Approval No. 2023-51 - 2023/30).
Informed consent statement: All study participants provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Data sharing statement: There are no additional data.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement-checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement-checklist of items.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Elif Yöyen, Assistant Professor, MD, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Sakarya University, Esentepe, No. 2 Ring Road, Sakarya 54050, Türkiye. elifyoyen@sakarya.edu.tr
Received: August 7, 2024 Revised: November 3, 2024 Accepted: December 9, 2024 Published online: February 19, 2025 Processing time: 159 Days and 13.4 Hours
Abstract
BACKGROUND
Alexithymia is defined as difficulties in identifying, expressing, and understanding emotions. An unapproving environment during childhood is defined as the child not receiving emotional approval from their parents, being punished, or having their emotions devalued. The formation of self-esteem is shaped by the influence of parental behavior during childhood. The communication that the child establishes with their parents contributes to their increased self-esteem and sense of importance. The absence of this may play a role in developmental psychopathology.
AIM
To examine the mediating role of self-esteem in the relationship between a disapproving environment in childhood and alexithymia.
METHODS
The research in the relational screening model was conducted with 404 participants. Demographic Information Form, Disapproving Environment Scale in Childhood, Toronto Alexithymia Scale, and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale were used as data collection tools. Hayes’ bootstrapping technique was used in the analysis of the data obtained from the research.
RESULTS
As a result of the analyses, parental disapproval positively predicted the level of alexithymia (rmother = 0.51, rfather = 0.52, P < 0.05) and negatively predicted self-esteem (rmother = -0.75, rfather = -0.67, P < 0.05). Additionally, self-esteem negatively predicted alexithymia (r = -0.58, P < 0.05). It was observed that self-esteem had a partial mediating effect on the relationship between parental disapproval and alexithymia. Family types were analyzed separately as chaotic, approving, perfect, and typical. Of these, the chaotic family type positively predicted alexithymia (r = 0.33, P < 0.05) and negatively predicted self-esteem (r = -0.60, P < 0.05). The approving family type negatively predicted alexithymia (r = -0.43, P < 0.05) and positively predicted self-esteem (r = 0.61, P < 0.05). The perfect family type negatively predicted alexithymia (r = -0.27, P < 0.05) and positively predicted self-esteem (r = -0.45, P < 0.05).
CONCLUSION
The type of family in which the child grows up in and parental disapproval during childhood affected the child’s self-esteem and caused alexithymic personality traits.
Core Tip: This study showed that the type of family in which a child grows up and parental disapproval in childhood affected the child’s self-esteem and led to alexithymic personality traits. The child’s self-esteem partially mediated the relationship between parental disapproval and alexithymia. Family type was also important for alexithymia. A chaotic family type had a positive effect on alexithymia and a negative effect on the self-esteem variable, whereas the approving and perfect family types had a negative effect on alexithymia and a positive effect on self-esteem and protected the child in terms of alexithymic personality traits.
