The wandering mind in borderline personality disorder: Instability in self- and other-related thoughts.
Diagnostic criteria for borderline personality disorder (BPD) include instability in identity and interpersonal relationships. Here, we probed whether instability is already present in BPD patients' thoughts about themselves and others. We tested BPD patients (N=27) and healthy controls (N=25) with a mind-wandering task that assesses content and variability of stimulus-independent self-generated thoughts. Multi-level modeling revealed that while BPD patients and healthy controls mind-wander to a similar extent, BPD patients' thoughts are colored predominantly negatively. Most importantly, although their thoughts concerned the self and others as much as in controls, they fluctuated more strongly in the degree to which their thoughts concerned themselves and others and also gave more extreme ratings. Self- and other related thoughts that were more extreme were also more negative in valence. The increased variability supports current conceptualizations of BPD and may account for the instability in identity and interpersonal relationships.
Department of Social Neuroscience, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany. Electronic address: kanske@cbs.mpg.de.
Philipp
P
Kanske
Department of Educational Sciences and Psychology, Free University Berlin, Germany.
Lars
L
Schulze
Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany.
Isabel
I
Dziobek
Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany.
Hannah
H
Scheibner
Charité- Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Campus Benjamin Franklin, Department of Psychiatry, Berlin, Germany.
Stefan
S
Roepke
Department of Social Neuroscience, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany.
Tania
T
Singer
D000328:Adult; D001883:Borderline Personality Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D012649:Self Concept; D013850:Thinking; D055815:Young Adult
Borderline personality disorders; Identity; Interpersonal relationships; Mind-wandering; Self-generated thought; Self-other representations