The Social-Cognitive Basis of Borderline and Antisocial Personality Disorder: Introduction

Abstract

In recent years there has been an explosion of research examining the social-cognitive correlates of personality disorders, in particular Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) or psychopathy. This research is interdisciplinary and utilizes methodologies and constructs from clinical psychology, social psychology, cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, behavioral economics, neuroeconomics, and psychodynamic approaches. Never before has this research been brought together in a single volume. Against this background, we were fortunate to assemble several leaders in the field of the social-cognitive basis of BPD and ASPD to contribute original empirical articles on the social-cognition of BPD and ASPD or psychopathy across the lifespan. In reviewing the contributions of this group of authors, the variety of social-cognitive constructs and associated experimental probes is staggering, and points not only to the heterogeneity of the umbrella construct of social cognition, but also to the creativity of approaches to probe its components. For instance, in the first paper presented for BPD, Sharp, Ha, Carbone, Kim, Perry, Williams, and Fonagy make use of a theory of mind task utilizing movie clips to demonstrate change in borderline symptoms as a function of change in excessive theory of mind (or hypermentalizing) during inpatient treatment. Related to the idea of hypersensitivity to mental states in BPD, Hagenhoff, Franzen, Gerstner, Koppe, Sammer, Netter, Gallhofer, and Lis used a visual search task which required subjects to detect a face with an incongruent emotional expression within a crowd of neutral faces in the hopes of demonstrating a pronounced anger-superiority-effect in BPD patients. The tendency for a bias for negative valence in BPD was also investigated by Sieswerda, Barnow, Verheul, and Arntz, who examined negativistic and dichotomous thinking, and splitting in borderline patients through the use of movie clips against the broader theoretical background of a schema approach to personality disorder. Also in the cognitive-behavioral therapy