Facial Expression Recognition Ability Among Women with Borderline Personality Disorder: Implications for Emotion Regulation?

Abstract

This study examined recognition of facial expressions of emotion among women diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD; n = 21), compared to a group of women with histories of childhood sexual abuse with no current or prior diagnosis of BPD (n = 21) and a group of women with no history of sexual abuse or BPD (n = 20). Facial recognition was assessed by a slide set developed by Ekman and Matsumoto (Japanese and Caucasian Facial Expressions of Emotion and Neutral Faces, 1992), expanded and improved from previous slide sets, and utilized a coding system that allowed for free responses rather than the more typical fixed-response format. Results indicated that borderline individuals were primarily accurate perceivers of others' emotions and showed a tendency toward heightened sensitivity on recognition of fear, specifically. Results are discussed in terms of emotional appraisal ability and emotion dysregulation among individuals with BPD.

Amygdala hyperreactivity in borderline personality disorder: implications for emotional dysregulation

“…In a study in which the Ekman faces were used, Wagner and Linehan (1999) found that, compared with healthy control subjects, BPD patients were able to identify human facial expressions accurately in all cases except for neutral faces (the same stimuli that we have used), for which they tended to make errors and consigned negative emotions to those faces. In the present study, the most striking difference between the BPD and NC groups was the much greater incidence of BPD patients projecting negative attributes onto the Ekman faces.…”

Emotion Recognition in Borderline Personality Disorder—A Review of the Literature

“…In contrast, Wagner and Linehan asked participants to verbally describe the emotional state of the presented person. Using this approach, they were able to show enhanced facial emotion recognition in the BPD group for fearful faces and a tendency in this group to over-report fear when presented with neutral facial expressions (Wagner & Linehan, 1999). This effect was interpreted as reflecting a negativity bias in the evaluation of ambiguous facial expressions in BPD.…”

“…Accordingly, BPD patients have been expected to show enhanced social sensitivity, which is reflected by increased vigilance for social cues, especially for cues that signal social rejection or threat (Wagner & Linehan, 1999). Thus, it has been assumed that BPD patients show enhanced sensitivity to facial emotional expressions, resulting in a lower detection threshold and increased accuracy in the detection of emotions.…”

Enhanced sensitivity and response bias for male anger in women with borderline personality disorder

“…Indeed, rather than reporting impaired emotion recognition associated with BPD, Wagner and Linehan (1999) found that women with BPD (all of whom had experienced child sexual abuse) were more accurate in their recognition of fear than both healthy female controls and women who had experienced childhood sexual abuse (but who did not have BPD). Women with BPD also showed a tendency to report Emotion Perception and Borderline PD 5 seeing fear in slides that did not contain fear, suggesting a bias toward fear recognition, even in the absence of fear cues.…”

“…Although some investigators report that people with BPD generally perform more poorly than controls on tests of emotion recognition (Bland et al, 2004;Unoka et al, 2011) in other studies no differences in ability to recognize emotions in static photographs of emotional faces have been found (Dyck et al, 2009;Minzenberg et al, 2006;Wagner and Linehan, 1999). Indeed, rather than reporting impaired emotion recognition associated with BPD, Wagner and Linehan (1999) found that women with BPD (all of whom had experienced child sexual abuse) were more accurate in their recognition of fear than both healthy female controls and women who had experienced childhood sexual abuse (but who did not have BPD).…”