The Comparison of Alexithymia and Emotional Creativity among Gifted and Normal Female Students

The current study was aimed to compare alexithymia and emotional creativity among gifted and normal female students. 307 high school students of second-grade (144 normal students and 163 gifted students) were selected by multistage clustering sampling method, who completed Toronto Alexithymia Scale (Bagby, Parker and Taylor, 1994) and emotional creativity inventory (April, 1999). For analyzing the data, Pearson correlation coefficient and multivariate analysis of variance were used.Results of the research showed that there is a significant negative association between emotional intelligence and emotional creativity in both groups of students (gifted and normal). Only in gifted students there was a positive and significant relationship between the subscale of effectiveness/authenticity and alexithymia. There was also a significant difference in scores of alexithymia and emotional creativity between both groups, such that scores of alexithymia in normal students and scores of emotional creativity in gifted students were higher than the other group.The higher the students’ emotional creativity is, the better and easier they would be able to know and express their emotions, and they can consequently communicate better with others.