Abstract
Interpersonal difficulties, which are characteristic of Borderline personality disorder (BPD), may be related to problems with social cognition. We explored facial emotion recognition in 44 women (15 with BPD, 15 healthy controls, and 14 with a history of childhood trauma but no BPD) examining the role of BPD and abuse history in the ability to detect fearful, angry and happy cues in emotional faces. In Task 1, participants viewed pictures of morphed faces containing different percentages of specific emotions and reported the emotion they saw. In Task 2, participants were asked to increase the intensity of a specific emotion on an initially neutral face until they could detect that emotion in the face. Across both tasks, BPD predicted the earlier detection of anger in male faces. BPD symptoms also predicted the misidentification of anger in male faces containing no anger cues. Although participants with BPD were slower to recognize happiness in male faces, their overall ability to recognize happiness was unimpaired. Abuse history did predict problems with happiness recognition. Finally, recognition of fear was unrelated to abuse history and BPD. Findings suggest that BPD is associated with a bias toward seeing anger in males and that this is independent of abuse history.
Highlights
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a severe form of psychopathology characterized by emotion dysregulation and problems with interpersonal functioning, as well as by chronic feelings of emptiness, impulsivity, and recurrent suicidal behavior
Zero-order correlations between physical and sexual abuse, BPD, and emotion identification thresholds are provided in Table 2. 3.5 Task 2: Emotion Recognition In Task 2, we examined the level of intensity (e.g., 30% happy) at which participants could recognize an explicitly targeted emotion that they were told to look for
Replicating the findings reported for Task 1, BPD pathology, but not abuse history, was significantly predictive of earlier detection of anger in male faces
Summary
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a severe form of psychopathology characterized by emotion dysregulation and problems with interpersonal functioning, as well as by chronic feelings of emptiness, impulsivity, and recurrent suicidal behavior. The etiological pathway of BPD is not well understood, negative experiences with caretakers are implicated in many theoretical models of the disorder (e.g., Bateman and Fonagy, 2003; Clarkin et al, 2007; Linehan, 1993). In the case of BPD the interaction of biological vulnerabilities and problems in early attachment relationships are thought to lead to the development of disturbances in the mental representations of the self and others (Clarkin et al, 2007; Fonagy and Luyten, 2009). Difficult early relationships may lead to biases in social cognition in people with BPD. They may compromise the accurate detection of important interpersonal cues
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