Department of Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.
Psychol Med. 2011 Sep;41(9):1929-38. doi: 10.1017/S0033291711000080. Epub 2011 Feb 9.
Disturbances in social interaction are a defining feature of patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD). In this study, facial emotional expressions, which are crucial for adaptive interactions in social contexts, were assessed in patients with BPD in response to social exclusion.
We examined facial emotional reactions of 35 patients with BPD and 33 healthy controls when playing Cyberball, a virtual ball-tossing game that reliably induces social exclusion. Besides self-reported emotional responses, facial emotional expressions were analyzed by applying the Emotional Facial Action Coding System (EMFACS).
Patients with BPD showed a biased perception of participation. They more readily reported feeling excluded compared to controls even when they were included. In BPD, social exclusion led to an increase in self-reported other-focused negative emotions. Overall, EMFACS analyses revealed that BPD patients reacted with fewer positive expressions and with significantly more mixed emotional expressions (two emotional facial expressions at the same time) compared to the healthy control group when excluded.
Besides a negative bias for perceived social participation, ambiguous facial emotional expressions may play an important role in the disturbed relatedness in patients with BPD.
社交互动障碍是边缘型人格障碍(BPD)患者的一个显著特征。在这项研究中,我们评估了 BPD 患者在社交排斥情境下对社会排斥的面部情绪反应。
我们使用 Cyberball 游戏(一种可靠地诱发社交排斥的虚拟抛球游戏)检测了 35 名 BPD 患者和 33 名健康对照者的面部情绪反应。除了自我报告的情绪反应外,我们还通过应用情绪面部动作编码系统(EMFACS)对面部情绪表达进行了分析。
BPD 患者表现出对参与的感知偏差。与对照组相比,即使他们被包括在内,他们也更容易报告感到被排斥。在 BPD 中,社交排斥导致自我报告的其他焦点负性情绪增加。总的来说,与健康对照组相比,当被排斥时,BPD 患者的 EMFACS 分析显示他们的积极表情较少,混合情绪表情(同时有两种情绪表情)明显更多。
除了对感知社会参与的负面偏见外,模糊的面部情绪表达可能在 BPD 患者的人际关系障碍中起着重要作用。