Social judgement in borderline personality disorder.
BACKGROUND
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a common and serious mental illness, associated with a high risk of suicide and self harm. Those with a diagnosis of BPD often display difficulties with social interaction and struggle to form and maintain interpersonal relationships. Here we investigated the ability of participants with BPD to make social inferences from faces.


METHODS
20 participants with BPD and 21 healthy controls were shown a series of faces and asked to judge these according to one of six characteristics (age, distinctiveness, attractiveness, intelligence, approachability, trustworthiness). The number and direction of errors made (compared to population norms) were recorded for analysis.


RESULTS
Participants with a diagnosis of BPD displayed significant impairments in making judgements from faces. In particular, the BPD Group judged faces as less approachable and less trustworthy than controls. Furthermore, within the BPD Group there was a correlation between scores on the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) and bias towards judging faces as unapproachable.


CONCLUSIONS
Individuals with a diagnosis of BPD have difficulty making appropriate social judgements about others from their faces. Judging more faces as unapproachable and untrustworthy indicates that this group may have a heightened sensitivity to perceiving potential threat, and this should be considered in clinical management and treatment.
Division of Psychiatry, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
Katie
K
Nicol
Merrick
M
Pope
Reiner
R
Sprengelmeyer
Andrew W
AW
Young
Jeremy
J
Hall
D000328:Adult; D001883:Borderline Personality Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D035502:Trust; D055815:Young Adult