The authors compared self-reported and behavioral responses to reward and punishment in individuals diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD) or avoidant personality disorder (APD) relative to a healthy comparison (HC) group. As predicted, self-reported sensitivity to reward was significantly higher in the BPD group than in the APD and HC groups. Also as predicted, self-reported sensitivity to punishment was significantly elevated in both disordered groups but significantly higher in APD than in BPD. These hypothesized patterns were also evident in responses to behavioral tasks: Participants with BPD made more errors of commission and fewer errors of omission than HC participants on a passive avoidance learning task, and participants with APD showed greater reactivity to losses than other participants on a probabilistic reversal learning task. Results help characterize differences between these two disorders.

Stigma surrounding mental disorders deters many people from treatment, and prior studies have shown that internalization of stigma is inversely correlated with self-compassion. We examined the effect of a valuesaffirmation task shown to increase state self-compassion on attitudes about mental disorders and their treatment. Participants completed measures of their mental health attitudes and experiences prior to a valuesaffirming writing task or control writing task, and afterward completed measures of state self-compassion, attitudes about mental disorders, and treatment. Participants in the values-affirming condition showed significantly higher state self-compassion and lower levels of desired social distance and internalized stigma toward people with mental disorders, relative to the control condition. Significant interactions also showed that affirmation of values was effective in decreasing internalized treatment stigma and increasing willingness to seek help among those high in perceived public stigma and among those with positive attitudes about treatment. These findings suggest that interventions that focus on affirming values increase self-compassion, reduce stigma surrounding mental disorders, and also reduce stigma about mental health treatment among individuals for whom perceived public stigma is a treatment barrier. Our study extends previous research showing that affirming values increase self-compassionate and pro-social responses, to show that it can help reduce stigmatizing views of mental disorders and their treatment, in both the self and others.