Emotion recognition at different intensities in borderline personality disorder patients compared to healthy controls

Abstract

Borderline personality disorder is characterized by emotional dysregulation and underlying deficiencies in emotion recognition. This study investigated whether patients are more accurate in recognizing emotions that signify a social threat at low intensities of expression and whether they are less accurate in the recognition of these emotions at high intensities, compared to healthy controls. It was also investigated whether patients have a normalized recognition of these emotions after treatment for emotional dysregulation. 17 patients completed the emotion recognition task and the already existing data of 31 healthy controls were used. Two 2 x 2 x 2 ANOVAs were conducted to test the hypotheses. Contrary to the hypothesis, results indicated that patients were not more accurate in the recognition at low intensities and not less accurate at high intensities in comparison with the controls. An interaction effect suggests that patients, compared to controls, would rather be less accurate at low intensities and more accurate at high intensities. After treatment, patients did show improvements at low intensities, but they were evenly accurate at high intensities, compared to before. After treatment, patients have a more normalized recognition of anger and fear. These outcomes have an important implication for the treatment of BPD, because they provide tools to understand the underlying mechanisms in the pathology and treatment. Further research is needed to better understand the effects of BPD and BPD treatment on the emotion recognition.