Emotional Reactivity to Social Rejection and Negative Evaluation Among Persons With Borderline Personality Features

Abstract

The present study examined the emotional reactivity of persons with heightened borderline personality (BP) features to social rejection and negative evaluation in the laboratory. Individuals with high levels of BP features (n = 30) and controls with low levels of BP features (n = 44) were randomly assigned to a condition involving negative evaluation based on writing (negative evaluation/academic), or a condition involving negative evaluation based on personal characteristics as well as social rejection (negative evaluation/social rejection). Hypothesis 1 was that high-BP individuals, but not low-BP controls, would show greater emotional reactivity to the negative evaluation/social rejection stressor, compared with the negative evaluation/academic (writing) stressor. Hypothesis 2 was that high-BP individuals would specifically show greater reactivity of shame- and anger-related emotions to the negative evaluation/social rejection stressor compared with the negative evaluation/academic stressor. Findings indicated that high-BP individuals showed heightened emotional reactivity to the social rejection stressor but not to the negative evaluation stressor, but the opposite pattern occurred for controls. In addition, there was evidence for heightened reactivity of irritability, distress, and shame for the high-BP group, specifically in the social rejection condition.

Grandiose and Vulnerable Narcissism in Borderline Personality Disorder

“…In line with the latter [74], BPD patients with vulnerable but not grandiose traits were more sensitive to rejection in our study. As there is growing evidence for the role of rejection sensitivity in BPD [4, 75, 76], it could be worth investigating its relation to and overlap with vulnerable narcissism further.…”

Dysfunctional Responses to Emotion Mediate the Cross-Sectional Relationship Between Rejection Sensitivity and Borderline Personality Features

“…Self-reported anxious anticipation and expectation of rejection has demonstrated very strong positive correlations with BPD symptoms (Gardner, Qualter, Styllanou, & Robinson, 2010) and BPD-related thoughts and feelings (Staebler, Helbing, Rosenbach, & Renneberg, 2010). Individuals with BPD, compared to those without, also have shown increased shame and negative affect in response to experiences of social rejection (Chapman, Walters, & Dixon Gordon, 2012).…”

Interpersonal Problems and Negative Affect in Borderline Personality and Depressive Disorders in Daily Life

“…Previous work has shown a positive relationship between rejection and negative affect, particularly hostility, both broadly (for reviews, see Gerber & Wheeler, 2009; Romero-Canyas, Downey, Berenson, Ayduk, & Kang, 2010) and in BPD participants in particular. For example, compared to non-BPD comparisons, BPD participants and participants high in BPD features reported increased negative affect (Dixon-Gordon, Chapman, Lovasz, & Walters, 2011; Dixon-Gordon, Gratz, Breetz, & Tull, 2013) and hostility (Beeney, Levy, Gatzke-Kopp, & Hallquist, 2014; Chapman, Dixon-Gordon, Butler, & Walters, 2015; Chapman, Walters, & Gordon, 2014; Renneberg et al, 2012) following experimentally induced rejection. Similar findings have been observed using EMA methods: BPD participants reported higher levels of negative affect than healthy controls following two different rejection cues, an interaction partner whom they perceived as acting in a cold-quarrelsome (Sadikaj, Moskowitz, Russell, Zuroff, & Paris, 2013) or a non-communal (Sadikaj, Russell, Moskowitz, & Paris, 2010) way.…”