The relationship of personality, alexithymia, anxiety symptoms, and odor awareness: a mediation analysis

作者：Binfeng Zhang, Xiuxia Li, Hongzhen Deng, Peixuan Tan, Wanyong He, Shuling Huang, Lu Wang, Hao Xu, Lei Cao, Guanghui Nie · 发表于：BMC Psychiatry · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.1186/s12888-024-05653-y · 被引用次数：9 · 研究领域：Olfactory and Sensory Function Studies、Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments、Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Research

OBJECTIVE: Personality, emotions, and olfaction exhibit partial anatomical overlap in the limbic system structure, establishing potential mechanisms between personality, affective disorders, and olfactory-related aspects. Thus, this study aims to investigate the associations among the Big Five personality traits, alexithymia, anxiety symptoms, and odor awareness. METHODS: A total of 863 college participants were recruited for this study. All participants completed the Chinese Big Five Personality Inventory-15, the Odor Awareness Scale (OAS), the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20, and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Screener-7. Structural equation modeling was employed to examine the hypothesized mediated model. RESULTS: The findings revealed the majority of significant intercorrelations among the dimensions of the Big Five personality traits, alexithymia, anxiety symptoms, and OAS (|r| = 0.072-0.567, p < 0.05). Alexithymia and anxiety symptoms exhibited a serial mediation effect between neuroticism and OAS (95%CI[0.001, 0.014]), conscientiousness and OAS (95%CI[-0.008, -0.001]), and extraversion and OAS (95%CI[-0.006, -0.001]). Anxiety symptoms mediated the relationship between agreeableness and OAS (95%CI[-0.023, -0.001]) and between openness and OAS (95%CI [0.004, 0.024]). CONCLUSION: The mediating roles of alexithymia and anxiety symptoms between the Big Five personality traits and odor awareness support the idea of a certain level of association among personality, emotions, a...