Borderline Personality and the Detection of Angry Faces

Many studies have assessed emotion recognition in patients with Borderline Personality Disorder and considerable evidence has been accumulated on patients' ability to categorize emotions. In contrast, their ability to detect emotions has been investigated sparsely. The only two studies that assessed emotion detection abilities found contradictory evidence on patients' ability to detect angry faces.

To clarify whether patients with Borderline Personality Disorder show enhanced detection of angry faces, we conducted three experiments: a laboratory study (n = 53) with a clinical sample and two highly powered web studies that measured Borderline features (n1 = 342, n2 = 220). Participants in all studies completed a visual search paradigm, and the reaction times for the detection of angry vs. happy faces were measured.

Consistently, data spoke against enhanced detection of angry faces in the Borderline groups, indicated by non-significant group (Borderline vs. healthy control) × target (angry vs. happy) interactions, despite highly satisfactory statistical power to detect even small effects.

In contrast to emotion categorization, emotion detection appears to be intact in patients with Borderline Personality Disorder and individuals high in Borderline features. The importance of distinguishing between these two processes in future studies is discussed.