Stabilisierung und Affektregulation

The cognitive theory of personality disorders hypothesizes that the emotional dysregulation and interpersonal problems in individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) are, at least partially, caused by dysfunctional cognitive schemas. These schemas lead to biased evaluation of environmental and interpersonal stimuli. This study examined the interpersonal evaluations of individuals with BPD, depressive and healthy control participants with the thin-slice judgments paradigm. Participants were asked to evaluate six persons in six film clips, which showed these persons for 10s, during which these persons entered a room and took a seat. Interpersonal style of the BPD group was investigated with the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems (IIP-C) questionnaire. Individuals with BPD judged the persons as being more negative and aggressive and less positive than the healthy participants, and more aggressive than the depressive individuals. In addition, individuals with BPD reported more extreme interpersonal behavior relative to the controls. The findings indicate an aggressivistic evaluation bias and elevated levels of interpersonal problems in individuals with BPD as suggested in the cognitive theory.

This study examined correlations of borderline personality disorder (BPD) symptoms with scales from Cloninger's psychobiological model taking gender and psychiatric comorbidity into consideration. Inpatients with BPD (n = 202) were compared to several control groups including psychiatrically healthy persons (n = 327), subjects with affective disorders (n = 46), alcohol use disorders (n = 47), cluster C personality disorders (n = 23) and antisocial personality disorder (n = 25). The results indicate that only males with BPD presented an 'explosive' temperament suggested by Cloninger, with simultaneously high levels of novelty seeking and harm avoidance. In contrast, women with BPD were characterized by high levels of harm avoidance, but not novelty seeking. Regarding temperament and character dimensions our analyses suggest that patients with BPD could be characterized, in particular, by a combination of high harm avoidance and very low self-directedness. The specific temperament configuration of BPD postulated by Cloninger's psychobiological model could only partially be supported. The results provide support for the importance of controlling for gender effects when investigating the applicability of dimensional models with respect to personality disorders. 2007 S. Karger AG, Basel