Superior ‘theory of mind’ in borderline personality disorder: An analysis of interaction behavior in a virtual trust game

Franzen, Nele; Hagenhoff, Meike; Baer, Nina; Schmidt, Annesuse; Mier, Daniela; Sammer, Gebhard; Gallhofer, Bernd; Kirsch, Peter; Lis, Stefanie

doi:10.1016/j.psychres.2010.11.012

Cited by 130 publications

(98 citation statements)

References 53 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…This finding suggests that our participants learnt from the 'trustee population' during each round. Interestingly, Franzen et al (2011) proposed a superior 'theory of mind' in BPD because BPD patients adjusted their investment to the objective fairness of a partner in a multiround trust game, whereas healthy controls disregard the objective fairness of a partner when emotional facial expressions are present. Although we were able to control for reputation effects we can hence not fully exclude learning from feedback.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inconsistency and social decision making in patients with Borderline Personality Disorder

Preuss

Brändle

Hager

et al. 2016

Psychiatry Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Inconsistent social behavior is a core psychopathological feature of borderline personality disorder. The goal of the present study was to examine inconsistency in social decision-making using simple economic social experiments. We investigated the decisions of 17 female patients with BPD, 24 patients with major depressive disorder (MDD), and 36 healthy controls in three single shot economic experiments measuring trust, cooperation, and punishment. BPD severity was assessed using the Zanarini Rating Scale for BPD. Investments across identical one-shot trust and punishment games were significantly more inconsistent in BPD patients than in controls. Such inconsistencies were only found in the social risk conditions of the trust and punishment conditions but not in the non-social control conditions. MDD patients did not show such inconsistencies. Furthermore, social support was negatively correlated with inconsistent decision-making in the trust and punishment game, which underscores the clinical relevance of this finding.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inconsistency and social decision making in patients with Borderline Personality Disorder

Preuss

Brändle

Hager

et al. 2016

Psychiatry Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…When the unfair trustee provided emotional cues, BPD patients assessed their own behaviour as more fair, while the lack of cues led patients to assess their own behaviour as unfair. The authors thus concluded that BPD patients are superior in the attribution of mental states to interaction partners when emotional cues are present (Franzen et al, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Amongst individuals with BPD, researchers have suggested that a deficit in cognitive empathy may contribute to the Contents lists available at ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/psychresns interpersonal dysfunction typically observed (Harari et al, 2010). Franzen et al (2011) used the trust game to analyse processes of mentalising in a simulated social interaction situation. BPD patients adjusted their investment to the fairness of their partner.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In contrast, healthy controls disregarded the trustees' fairness in the presence of emotional facial expressions. Both groups performed equally in an emotion-recognition task and assessed the trustees' fairness comparably (Franzen et al, 2011). When the unfair trustee provided emotional cues, BPD patients assessed their own behaviour as more fair, while the lack of cues led patients to assess their own behaviour as unfair.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Dysregulation between emotion and theory of mind networks in borderline personality disorder

O’Neill

D'Souza

Samson

et al. 2015

Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

a b s t r a c tIndividuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) commonly display deficits in emotion regulation, but findings in the area of social cognitive (e.g., theory of mind, ToM) capacities have been heterogeneous. The aims of the current study were to investigate differences between patients with BPD and controls in functional connectivity (1) between the emotion and ToM network and (2) in the default mode network (DMN). Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to investigate 19 healthy controls and 17 patients with BPD at rest and during ToM processing. Functional coupling was analysed. Significantly decreased functional connectivity was found for patients compared with controls between anterior cingulate cortex and three brain areas involved in ToM processes: the left superior temporal lobe, right supramarginal/inferior parietal lobes, and right middle cingulate cortex. Increased functional connectivity was found in patients compared with controls between the precuneus as the DMN seed and the left inferior frontal lobe, left precentral/middle frontal, and left middle occipital/ superior parietal lobes during rest. Reduced functional coupling between the emotional and the ToM network during ToM processing is in line with emotion-regulation dysfunctions in BPD. The increased connectivity between precuneus and frontal regions during rest might be related to extensive processing of internal thoughts and self-referential information in BPD.

show abstract

“…Previous findings regarding empathy in BPD have been conflicting: some studies showed that patients exhibit less empathy compared to controls (Minzenberg et al, 2006;Preißler et al, 2010;Fertuck et al, 2009), while others found evidence for heightened empathy (Franzen et al, 2011;Dinsdale and Crespi, 2013) in patients. Although this conflicting pattern has been explained by referring to the different domains of empathy that show reduced cognitive empathy in BPD patients with unchanged or even heightened affective empathy (reviewed in Dinsdale and Crespi, 2013), here we found that even the affective domain of empathy may be reduced, possibly reflecting a compensatory response in order to protect from emotional contagion through the emotions of others that has been found in BPD (Dinsdale and Crespi, 2013).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Aberrant link between empathy and social attribution style in borderline personality disorder

Homan

Reddan

Brosch

et al. 2017

Journal of Psychiatric Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

a b s t r a c tIn social interactions, we often need to quickly infer why other people do what they do. More often than not, we infer that behavior is a result of personality rather than circumstances. It is unclear how the tendency itself may contribute to psychopathology and interpersonal dysfunction. Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is characterized by severe interpersonal dysfunction. Here, we investigated if this dysfunction is related to the tendency to over-attribute behaviors to personality traits. Healthy controls and patients with BPD judged positive and negative behaviors presented within a situational constraint during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Before the experiment, we measured trait levels of empathy, paranoia, and need for cognition. Behaviorally, we found that empathy levels predicted the tendency to attribute behavior to traits in healthy controls, whereas in patients with BPD this relationship was significantly weakened. Whole brain analysis of group-by-empathy interaction revealed that when participants judged the behavior during the attribution phase, several brain regions implicated in mentalizing distinguished patients from controls: In healthy controls, neural activity scaled negatively with empathy, but this relationship was reversed in BPD patients. Due to the cross-sectional study design we cannot establish a causal link between empathy and social attributions. These findings indicate that the self-reported tendency to feel for others is related to the tendency to integrate situational information beyond personality. In BPD patients, by contrast, the association between empathy and attribution was significantly weaker, rendering empathy less informative in predicting the overall attribution style.

show abstract

Superior ‘theory of mind’ in borderline personality disorder: An analysis of interaction behavior in a virtual trust game

Cited by 130 publications

References 53 publications

Inconsistency and social decision making in patients with Borderline Personality Disorder

Inconsistency and social decision making in patients with Borderline Personality Disorder

Dysregulation between emotion and theory of mind networks in borderline personality disorder

Aberrant link between empathy and social attribution style in borderline personality disorder

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About