Hypermentalizing and Borderline Personality Disorder: A Meta-Analytic Review

McLaren, Veronica; Gallagher, Matthew W.; Hopwood, Chris; Sharp, Carla

doi:10.1176/appi.psychotherapy.20210018

Cited by 30 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 84 publications

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“…Interestingly, with the exception of an r = .22, 95% CI [.058, .4] association with somatization (BSI-18), over-mentalizing on the MASC was not significantly associated with any of the other measures tapping psychopathology. This pattern of results stands in contrast to previous findings pointing to an association of r = .25, 95% CI [.17, .31] between over-mentalizing and a wide range of psychopathology instances (McLaren et al, 2022). Future research can address this discrepancy.…”

Section: Collabra: Psychologycontrasting

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, even within a diagnosis, meaningful differences in specific mentalizing tendencies may relate to significant real-life differential outcomes (see for example, Engelstad et al, 2019) On the other hand, there is currently mixed evidence regarding the notion that certain conditions are neatly associated with a particular type of mentalizing style (see Langdon & Brock, 2008). For example, in a recent meta-analytic review, McLaren et al (2022) found that over-mentalizing was associated with a wide range of psychopathology symptoms, calling into question the notion that over-mentalizing is specifically tied to specific personality disorders such as borderline personality disorder.…”

Section: Over-mentalizing/under-mentalizingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Individual Differences in Mentalizing Tendencies

Weinstein

Whitmore

Mills

2022

Collabra: Psychology

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The human capacity to represent others and oneself in terms of internal mental states—mentalizing—varies across individuals. In this paper, we assess the extent to which commonly used mentalizing measures successfully capture meaningful individual differences in mentalizing tendencies and explore how these tendencies relate to broader variability in cognitive and social functioning. To this end, we administered a battery of behavioral and self-report measures of mentalizing, fluid intelligence, personality dimensions, sense of self, cognitive tendencies, and psychopathology symptoms in an online study (N=150). In a series of preregistered analyses, we found that fluid intelligence scores were most predictive of mentalizing variability while dimensions such as psychopathy, empathy and sense of power were also significantly associated with this variability (though to a lesser extent than fluid intelligence). Of the psychopathology symptoms assessed, somatization and self-harm were most strongly associated with inter-individual variability in mentalizing and uncertainty about mental states was the mentalizing dimension most tightly correlated to psychopathology symptoms. Our findings point to the need for more research to explore ways in which mentalizing tendencies are tied to other domains, such as general cognitive functioning and psychopathology. Additionally, our findings highlight the potential for merging clinical assessment tools with social cognition research.

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Section: Collabra: Psychologycontrasting

confidence: 99%

Section: Over-mentalizing/under-mentalizingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual Differences in Mentalizing Tendencies

Weinstein

Whitmore

Mills

2022

Collabra: Psychology

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“…The same negativity bias was evident in interpretations of ironic praise and literal criticism: HC tended to interpret these statements literally, considering ironic praise as literal critique and literal critique as such. Although individuals with BPD's difficulty to determine the literality of a statement may be explained by overattribution (McLaren et al, 2022), our results did not indicate that these attributions are hostile when measured implicitly.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 80%

“…As both personality dimensions often overlap (Kwapil et al, 2021), it is important to analyze distinct and/or shared mechanisms of disorders in the schizophrenic spectrum and BPD. Especially, as hypermentalization is common in schizophrenia and other disorders as well (McLaren et al, 2022). Contrary to other studies (Kieckhäfer et al, 2019;Langdon & Coltheart, 2004;Rapp et al, 2010Rapp et al, , 2013Rapp et al, 2014), schizotypal symptoms did not explain irony detection beyond borderline symptoms, although patients scored high on both.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 58%

Irony detection, implicit and explicit response biases in patients with borderline personality disorder

Felsenheimer¹,

Kieckhäfer²,

Rapp³

2022

Preprint

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Objectives: Intended meanings in verbal irony differ from those of the actual words. To look behind these words, we need to integrate perspectives of ourselves, others, and their beliefs about us. Although patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) experience problems in social cognition and schizotypal symptoms, research on irony comprehension mainly focused on the latter. Accounting for possible negative biases in BPD, the current study examined the detection of praising and critical irony in a text message interface. Design: A cross-sectional study including 30 patients and 30 matched healthy controls (HC).Methods: Participants completed measures of cognitive and affective empathy (Interpersonal Reactivity Index, IRI), schizotypal (Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire; SPQ), and borderline symptoms (Borderline Symptom List; BSL-23). Asking for literality and intention ratings of the stimuli, the paradigm allowed to analyze literality detection, implicit and explicit response biases in a signal detection framework.Results: Borderline symptoms explained decreased sensitivity for the detection of literal and ironic statements across groups. While HC showed a negativity bias on an implicit level, BPD perceived praising remarks less praising when explicitly asked, but no difference on critical remarks. Neither empathy, nor schizotypy explained any outcomes. Conclusion: This was the first study to show impaired detection of verbal irony in patients with BPD. While patients were less biased than HC in implicit measurements, they perceived praising remarks as less positive. Results stress the potential resource of non-verbal therapies to establish an appreciating therapeutical environment and contribute to difficulties in self-other distinction in BPD.

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“…The Movie for the Assessment of Social Cognition (MASC; Dziobek et al, 2006) is a measure of mentalizing that tasks participants with watching a video and inferring the mental states of actors who are shown in social interactions. MASC scores distinguish between hypomentalizing and hypermentalizing and are associated with psychopathology (e.g., Fossati et al, 2017Fossati et al, , 2018; for a meta-analysis, see McLaren et al, 2021) but the administration of the MASC is also rather time-consuming and limited to the mentalizing of others. In addition, maladaptive forms of mentalizing may primarily manifest themselves in the context of interpersonal relationships (Bo et al, 2017) and might thus not be optimally measured under laboratory conditions when interpreting the mental states of actors with no possibility to interact.…”

Section: Mentalizing Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development and Validation of the Certainty About Mental States Questionnaire (CAMSQ): A Self-Report Measure of Mentalizing Oneself and Others

2021

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The Certainty About Mental States Questionnaire (CAMSQ) is a self-report measure of the perceived capacity to understand mental states of the self and others (i.e., mentalizing). In two studies (total N = 1828), we developed the CAMSQ in both English and German as a two-dimensional measure of Self- and Other-Certainty, investigated associations with other measures of mentalizing, and explored relationships to personality functioning and mental health. The CAMSQ performed well in terms of convergent and discriminant validity, internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and measurement invariance across the United States and Germany. The present research indicates that the CAMSQ assesses maladaptive forms of having too little or too much certainty about mental states (consistent with hypomentalizing and hypermentalizing). A psychologically adaptive profile of perceived mentalizing capacity appears to be characterized by high Self-Certainty that exceeds Other-Certainty, suggesting that imbalances between Self-Certainty and Other-Certainty (Other-Self-Discrepancy) play an important role within personality pathology.

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Hypermentalizing and Borderline Personality Disorder: A Meta-Analytic Review

Cited by 30 publications

References 84 publications

Individual Differences in Mentalizing Tendencies

Individual Differences in Mentalizing Tendencies

Irony detection, implicit and explicit response biases in patients with borderline personality disorder

Development and Validation of the Certainty About Mental States Questionnaire (CAMSQ): A Self-Report Measure of Mentalizing Oneself and Others

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