Impact of Negative Affect and Borderline Personality Disorder Symptomatology on Aggressive Behavior

Abstract

The current study examined whether individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) symptomatology would vary in their aggressive behavior following mood induction. One hundred and eighty-four males and females were randomly assigned to a neutral, sad, or anger mood induction. Following mood induction, individuals participated in an aggression paradigm disguised as a competitive reaction-time task wherein they were free to administer or refrain from administering shocks to an ostensible opponent. Results indicated that there were no main effects of gender, BPD symptomatology, or condition on aggressive behavior. Explication of a three-way interaction among BPD, gender, and condition revealed that when experiencing negative affect (anger or sadness), females endorsing higher levels of BPD symptomatology were less physically aggressive than their low BPD symptomatology counterparts. Results are discussed in relation to emotion regulation.

Acute Effect of Physical Exercise on Negative Affect in Borderline Personality Disorder: A Pilot Study

“…Different strategies are used to induce negative emotions in participants. Among these strategies, researchers have used frustrating tasks (Gratz et al, 2006;Sauer andBaer, 2011), electric shock (Seibert-Hatalsky andWilson, 2011), videos of sexual abuse or domestic violence (Chapman et al, 2010;Daros et al, 2018b;Elices et al, 2012;Jacob et al, 2011), memories of negative events (Sauer and Baer, 2011), music (Diedrich et al, 2016) or emotionally charged images (International Affective Picture System; Sloan et al, 2010). Of these approaches, presenting videos that induce negative emotions seems to be the easiest, most acceptable, and most frequently used strategy (Gilet, 2008).…”

Acute effect of physical exercise on negative affect in borderline personality disorder: A pilot study

“…When studying the impact of PE on affect ( Bernstein & McNally, 2017a , 2017b , 2018 ), researchers often experimentally induce an emotion to produce similar levels of affect across participants before exercising, or to modify affect after exercising ( Barrett et al, 2007 ; Barrett & Bliss‐Moreau, 2009 ; Kuppens et al, 2013 ; Posner et al, 2005 ). Different strategies are used to induce negative emotions, including frustrating tasks ( Gratz et al, 2006 ; Sauer & Baer, 2012 ), electric shocks ( Seibert-Hatalsky & Wilson, 2011 ), videos of sexual abuse or domestic violence ( Chapman et al, 2010 ; Daros, Williams, et al, 2018 ; Elices et al, 2012 ; Jacob et al, 2011 ), remembering negative memories ( Sauer & Baer, 2012 ), music ( Diedrich et al, 2016 ) or emotionally charged images ( Sloan et al, 2010 ). Of these approaches, presenting videos that induce negative emotions has been shown to be the easiest, most acceptable, and most frequently used strategy (for a review, see Gilet, 2008 ).…”