Social judgement in borderline personality disorder

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Psychiatry
• Social Cognition

Background:

• Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a prevalent mental illness linked to relationship difficulties and self-harm.
• Individuals with BPD often experience challenges in social interactions and forming relationships.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate social inference abilities from facial cues in individuals diagnosed with BPD.
• To compare facial social judgment accuracy between BPD patients and healthy controls.

Main Methods:

• 20 participants with BPD and 21 healthy controls evaluated faces on six characteristics.
• Judgments of age, distinctiveness, attractiveness, intelligence, approachability, and trustworthiness were recorded.
• Errors were quantified by comparing judgments to population norms.

Main Results:

• Participants with BPD showed significant impairments in making social judgments from faces.
• The BPD group rated faces as less approachable and trustworthy compared to controls.
• Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) scores correlated with a bias towards judging faces as unapproachable in the BPD group.

Conclusions:

• Individuals with BPD face difficulties in accurately interpreting social cues from faces.
• A tendency to perceive faces as unapproachable and untrustworthy suggests heightened threat sensitivity in BPD.
• These findings have implications for clinical management and treatment strategies for BPD.