Alexithymia, body perception and dismorphism: A study conducted on sportive and non-sportive subjects

Objective: The present research aims to investigate the relationship between body perception and the ability to identify and communicate emotional states in young adults. Method: The research involved a group of 200 Italian students, including 100 sportive subjects with an average age of 25 (S.D = 7.3) and 100 non-sportive subjects with an average age of 23 (S.D = 4.89). The subjects complited the following tools: Toronto Alexithymia Scale (Bagby et al. 1994), designed to measure the difficulty describing and identifying feelings, and externally-oriented thinking style; Body Uneasiness Test (Cuzzolaro et al. 2006) to investigate body perception and its possible distortions. Results: Data analysis seems to confirm the hypothesis that there is a difference between the two groups regarding body disperception. With regard to the gender variable, the analyses show that women seem to be more concerned about body image than men, who seem to attribute greater importance to body weight. Conclusions: It is possible that bodily disperception, associated with an inability to recognise emotions, leads to an exaggerated practice of sport that can lead to addiction.