Modulation of Trust in Borderline Personality Disorder by Script-Based Imaginal Exposure to Betrayal

Area of Science:

• Clinical Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Social Cognition

Background:

• Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by interpersonal and trust-related difficulties.
• Traditional methods for studying social behavior in BPD often involve deception, limiting their clinical research applicability.
• Developing reliable and ethical methods to evoke social difficulties is crucial for understanding BPD.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the efficacy of script-driven betrayal imagery as a novel stimulus for evoking mistrustful behavior in a social reinforcement learning task.
• To compare the effects of script-driven imagery with the standard confederate paradigm in participants with BPD and healthy controls (HC).
• To assess the impact of this imagery on negative affect and trusting behavior across groups.

Main Methods:

• Utilized script-driven betrayal imagery to elicit mistrust in a social reinforcement learning task.
• Compared this novel approach to the standard confederate paradigm.
• Recruited 21 participants with BPD and 20 healthy control participants.

Main Results:

• Script-driven imagery induced a temporary increase in negative affect and reduced trusting behavior similarly in both BPD and HC groups.
• Previously observed differences between BPD and HC groups were replicated: higher negative affect in BPD and greater sensitivity to social cues in BPD.
• The script-driven imagery approach demonstrated validity as an alternative social task stimulus.

Conclusions:

• Script-driven imagery is a valid and effective tool for evoking social and trust-related difficulties in research settings.
• This method provides a deception-free, scalable, and clinically relevant alternative for studying reinforcement learning in BPD.
• The approach successfully elicits disorder-specific states of social difficulty, aiding in the understanding of BPD.