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Updated: Feb 28, 2026

Conscious and Non-conscious Representations of Emotional Faces in Asperger's Syndrome
Published on: July 31, 2016
Facial emotion recognition and borderline personality pathology
Kevin B Meehan1, Chiara De Panfilis2, Nicole M Cain3
1Department of Psychology, Long Island University, 1 University Plaza, Brooklyn, NY 11201, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College, 21 Bloomingdale Road, White Plains, NY 10605, USA.
Individuals with borderline personality features show altered facial emotion recognition, with better detection of negative emotions at low intensities. Effortful control moderates this, potentially protecting against biases in social-cognitive processing.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Social Cognition
- Clinical Psychology
Background:
- Borderline personality pathology's effect on facial emotion recognition is debated.
- Previous studies show mixed results (impaired, comparable, enhanced accuracy).
- Variations in tasks and pathology heterogeneity likely cause discrepancies.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine facial emotion recognition for neutral and negative emotions at varying intensities.
- To assess effortful control as a moderator in borderline personality.
- To clarify the relationship between borderline personality features and emotion perception.
Main Methods:
- 132 non-clinical undergraduates completed a morphed facial emotion recognition task.
- Task included neutral and negative emotions at 100%, 75%, 50%, and 25% intensity.
- Participants self-reported borderline personality features and effortful control.
Main Results:
- Higher borderline personality features correlated with lower accuracy for neutral faces.
- Higher borderline personality features correlated with higher accuracy for negative emotion faces, especially at low intensities.
- Effortful control moderated these effects, influencing misattributions and low-intensity emotion detection.
Conclusions:
- Individuals with borderline personality features may have a bias towards detecting subtle negative emotions.
- High effortful control may mitigate social-cognitive vulnerabilities associated with borderline personality.
- Findings highlight the nuanced impact of borderline personality on emotion perception.
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