Borderline personality disorder and bias in the recognition of facial expressions of emotion: a pathway to understand the psychopathology

Abstract

Background: The identification of facial emotions is a key skill as it promotes rapid and accurate recognition of emotions and enables better communication and greater social adaptation. More recent studies have suggested that impaired social interactions may be related to deficits in social cognition and therefore in the recognition of facial expressions, contributing to social disturbance among individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD). Objective: To present the results of an empirical study assessing the recognition of facial emotion expressions in women with BPD, having as reference a group of healthy women from the general population. Methods: The subjects (40 female with BPD and 40 controls) were assessed with a dynamic task on a computer screen for recognition of facial expressions of emotion. Results: The BPD group had a lower accuracy in perceiving emotions of fear and surprise and slowness in recognising happiness. Logistic regression analyses also identified an association between BPD and higher sensitivity in the recognition of anger. Discussion: Women with BPD made more mistakes in the recognition of negative emotions, which can bias the behaviour and regulation of affective states, favouring in turn the emergence of some typical symptoms associated with BPD.

Impact of a Mechanism-Based Anti-Aggression Psychotherapy on Behavioral Mechanisms of Aggression in Patients With Borderline Personality Disorder

“…Consistent with previous studies ( 11 , 13 , 19 , 21 , 35 ), the finding that patients with BPD, but not HCs, more frequently misclassified faces as angry than other emotions in the long condition hints at a biased perception of facial expressions as angry in patients with BPD. However, contrary to our a priori hypothesis, we found no impact of MAAP on the increased tendency to misclassify facial expressions as angry in patients with BPD.…”

Impaired memory for cooperative interaction partners in borderline personality disorder

“…Our finding is also in line with other studies on long-term memory in BPD, where schema-relevant information was remembered better than neutral information [ 15 ]. Additionally, some recent studies on various aspects of social cognition in BPD likewise point to altered processing of positive stimuli in BPD [ 50 – 54 ]. Therefore, in addition to enhanced processing of negative stimuli, low processing of positive stimuli in BPD might further aggravate the negativity bias in BPD by a marked asymmetry with regard to negative versus of positive content.…”

Viés Atencional em Faces Emocionais no Transtorno de Personalidade Borderline

“…Nota-se que grande parte dos estudos mencionados mensuraram o viés atencional através de tarefas que mediram a tempo de reação (RT) (e.g. Ferreira et al, 2018;Jovev et al, 2012;Kaiser et al, 2016). No entanto, a relação distal deixa as medidas de RT vulneráveis ao efeito de confusão da informação emocional em mediação de processos, como, por exemplo, a execução de respostas.…”