Anxiety statistically mediates the association between stress and difficulty identifying feelings while depression shows no effect: a cross-sectional study in college students.

backgroundEmotion recognition (ER) refers to the perceptual and cognitive processes involved in identifying emotional expressions in others, whereas alexithymia reflects difficulties in identifying and describing one's own emotions. Mood and anxiety symptoms, as well as exposure to stress, have been associated with alterations in emotional processing. This study examined the associations between stress levels, self-emotion processing (alexithymia), and recognition of others' facial expressions in a non-clinical student sample.

methodsOne hundred twenty-four college students completed questionnaires assessing stress, anxiety (BAI), depression (BDI), and alexithymia (TAS-20). Stress typology measurements included Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) and Chronic Stress Scale (CSS). The Emotion Recognition (ER-40) task of PennCNB assessed the ability to recognize angry, fearful, sad, happy, and neutral facial expressions.

findingsER-40 performance was not significantly correlated with stress measures or psychopathology scores, except for the negative correlation of recognition of fear expressions with TAS-20 scores. The relatively high accuracy levels and limited variability observed in task performance may have reduced sensitivity to detect subtle associations, suggesting the possibility of ceiling effects. In contrast, all stress and psychopathology measures were positively correlated with alexithymia scores (BAI: p < 0.001, BDI: p < 0.001, CTQ: p = 0.008, PSS: p < 0.001, CSS: p = 0.001). In linear regression analysis, alexithymia, particularly "difficulty in identifying feelings" subscale (TAS_DIF), was found to be associated with scores in CSS and PSS, when corrected for age, gender and CTQ. Mediation analysis indicated that the association between stress measures and TAS_DIF was statistically associated through anxiety symptoms (p < 0.001), while associations through depressive symptoms were not significant.

conclusionHigher levels of perceived and chronic stress were associated with greater difficulties in identifying one's own emotions, and these associations were statistically mediated in part by anxiety symptoms. No significant associations were observed between stress and facial emotion recognition performance in this sample, nevertheless, the null findings related to the ER-40 should be interpreted cautiously, particularly in light of potential ceiling effects and the relatively high-functioning nature of the sample. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS: Interventions targeting anxiety and stress management may be beneficial and should be studied for students presenting with elevated stress and alexithymic traits, potentially supporting emotional clarity and adaptive coping in preventive mental health settings.