The Borderline Bias in Explicit Emotion Interpretation

Sylwia Hyniewska,Krystyna Rymarczyk,Kamila Jankowiak-Siuda,Joanna Dąbrowska,Iwona Makowska

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.733742

Abstract

Atypical emotion interpretation has been widely reported in individuals with borderline personality disorder (iBPD); however, empirical studies reported mixed results so far. We suggest that discrepancies in observations of emotion interpretation by iBPD can be explained by biases related to their fear of rejection and abandonment, i.e., the three moral emotions of anger, disgust, and contempt. In this study, we hypothesized that iBPD would show a higher tendency to correctly interpret these three displays of social rejection and attribute more negative valence. A total of 28 inpatient iBPDs and 28 healthy controls were asked to judge static and dynamic facial expressions in terms of emotions, valence, and self-reported arousal evoked by the observed faces. Our results partially confirmed our expectations. The iBPD correctly interpreted the three unambiguous moral emotions. Contempt, a complex emotion with a difficulty in recognizing facial expressions, was recognized better by iBPD than by healthy controls. All negative emotions were judged more negatively by iBPD than by controls, but no difference was observed in the neutral or positive emotion. Alexithymia and anxiety trait and state levels were controlled in all analyses.

Highlights

Adaptive emotion interpretation is fundamental for healthy human interactions and the mental health of individuals
Atypical appraisal of emotional cues of others could be related to traits, such as anger, anxiety, and alexithymia (Schlegel et al, 2017; Kiliç et al, 2020), and are characteristics of various mental disorders, such as borderline personality disorder (BPD) (Domes et al, 2009, 2011; De Panfilis et al, 2015)
Higher emotional reactivity in individuals with borderline personality disorder (iBPD) compared with controls was reported as greater amygdala activation to emotional and neutral faces (Donegan et al, 2003), as well as to aversive stimuli in

Summary

Introduction

Adaptive emotion interpretation is fundamental for healthy human interactions and the mental health of individuals. Research into emotion perception in individuals with borderline personality disorder (iBPD) reported heterogeneous results, with different studies suggesting deficits in emotion understanding, generalized negative biases, or, in some cases, even high sensitivity and more accurate labeling of subtle emotions. In several studies, neither increased psychophysiological responses, e.g., no greater potentiation of the startle response to negative pictures (Herpertz et al, 1999, 2000), nor any increased facial mimicry to facial expressions of emotions was observed (Matzke et al, 2014) in iBPD compared with controls. The authors concluded that, rather than heightened affective empathy in iBPD, a potential negativity bias could explain the diverse emotion interpretation deficits reported in the literature (Matzke et al, 2014). Only one negatively valenced emotion was presented, the authors suggested that these visual search results most probably can be explained by a lack of bias to negative stimuli

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion