Explicit and Implicit Measures of Identity Diffusion in Adolescent Girls With Borderline Personality Disorder

Abstract

The present study is the first to examine both the implicit and explicit self-concept of identity diffusion in a sample of adolescent patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD). A clinical sample of adolescent girls with diagnosed BPD (N = 30; M age = 15.9 years) and a sample of girls with a healthy personality development (N = 33; M age = 16.6 years) completed an implicit association test (IAT) that was adjusted to identity diffusion, the core of BPD. Common domains of child and adolescent psychopathology and core components of BPD were assessed using self-reports on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), the Borderline Personality Features Scale for Children—11 (BPFSC-11) and the Assessment of Identity Development in Adolescence (AIDA). BPD patients scored significantly higher on explicit measures of borderline pathology than girls with a healthy personality development. A crucial finding for this study was that girls with BPD had a significantly lower implicit preference for stability than their counterparts in the control group. Moreover, explicit measures of borderline personality pathology were significantly correlated with an implicit measure of identity diffusion, the core of BPD. However, when looking at the predictive ability of implicit and explicit measures, only explicit identity diffusion was significantly associated with borderline features. Our data suggests that adolescent girls with BPD differ from healthy individuals not only in their conscious representation but also in their implicit representation of the self with regard to BPD related characteristics, which further advances the need for the identification of at-risk adolescents.

Operationalizing intimacy and identity aspects of personality functioning in relation to personality disorder in adolescents

“…Our results also confirmed a relationship between intimacy and identity diffusion, suggesting that adolescents who reported feeling closer to their parents were more likely to report lower levels of identity diffusion. In addition, our findings confirmed a relationship between identity diffusion and borderline features, which is not unexpected given that identity disturbance is a core feature of BPD and similar findings have been demonstrated by prior research (19,50,73,75,76). Moreover, intimacy exerted a statistically significant indirect effect on borderline features via identity diffusion, such that greater perceived parental closeness was associated with lower BPD severity via lower levels of identity diffusion, but with no direct effect on borderline features in the absence of identity diffusion.…”