Neuroscience
People with borderline personality disorder (BPD) are emotionally fragile, impulsive, suffer from low mood, have intense unstable personal relationships and - according to a handful of studies - they also have enhanced empathy.
But new research by Judith Flury and colleagues shows the idea that BPD patients have enhanced empathy is a spurious finding reflecting the methodological design of prior studies combined with the fact BPD patients are particularly difficult to read.
The 76 lowest and highest scorers on the Borderline Syndrome Index were selected from among 789 students. These 76 were then arranged into pairs of low and high borderline participants. The members of each pair were videoed chatting to each other for ten minutes, after which each person completed a personality questionnaire about themselves, and about how they thought their partner saw themselves. This latter part of the design mirrors the methodology of earlier studies that seemed to show BPD is associated with enhanced empathy.
As in the earlier studies, it turned out that the high borderline students were better than the low borderline students at predicting how their partners scored their own personalities - a sign of empathy, you'd think. But further analysis showed that this finding was caused by the fact that all the students tended to score their partners' personalities in a fairly stereotypical way. This tactic worked if a participant's partner was low borderline (with a less unusual personality profile), but not if they were high borderline with an unusual personality profile - hence the apparent finding that high borderline scorers are more empathic.
The students also watched the videos of themselves meeting their partners, and recorded the main thoughts and feelings they had experienced during the encounter. They then watched the video again and attempted to predict what their partner had reported thinking and feeling during the encounter. Again, the high borderline students scored better at this task, but as before, this simply reflected the fact that within each of the student pairs, it was the low borderline students who had the more predictable, less outlandish thoughts and feelings.
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FLURY, J., ICKES, W., SCHWEINLE, W. (2008). The borderline empathy effect: Do high BPD individuals have greater empathic ability? Or are they just more difficult to "read"? Journal of Research in Personality, 42(2), 312-332. DOI: 10.1016/j.jrp.2007.05.008
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
Are people with borderline personality really more empathic?
People with borderline personality disorder (BPD) are emotionally fragile, impulsive, suffer from low mood, have intense unstable personal relationships and - according to a handful of studies - they also have enhanced empathy.But new research by Judith Flury and colleagues shows the idea that BPD patients have enhanced empathy is a spurious finding reflecting the methodological design of prior studies combined with the fact BPD patients are particularly difficult to read.
The 76 lowest and highest scorers on the Borderline Syndrome Index were selected from among 789 students. These 76 were then arranged into pairs of low and high borderline participants. The members of each pair were videoed chatting to each other for ten minutes, after which each person completed a personality questionnaire about themselves, and about how they thought their partner saw themselves. This latter part of the design mirrors the methodology of earlier studies that seemed to show BPD is associated with enhanced empathy.
As in the earlier studies, it turned out that the high borderline students were better than the low borderline students at predicting how their partners scored their own personalities - a sign of empathy, you'd think. But further analysis showed that this finding was caused by the fact that all the students tended to score their partners' personalities in a fairly stereotypical way. This tactic worked if a participant's partner was low borderline (with a less unusual personality profile), but not if they were high borderline with an unusual personality profile - hence the apparent finding that high borderline scorers are more empathic.
The students also watched the videos of themselves meeting their partners, and recorded the main thoughts and feelings they had experienced during the encounter. They then watched the video again and attempted to predict what their partner had reported thinking and feeling during the encounter. Again, the high borderline students scored better at this task, but as before, this simply reflected the fact that within each of the student pairs, it was the low borderline students who had the more predictable, less outlandish thoughts and feelings.
_________________________________
FLURY, J., ICKES, W., SCHWEINLE, W. (2008). The borderline empathy effect: Do high BPD individuals have greater empathic ability? Or are they just more difficult to "read"? Journal of Research in Personality, 42(2), 312-332. DOI: 10.1016/j.jrp.2007.05.008
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- Simon Baron-cohen: Inter-generational Patterns Of Abuse
Imagine you’re in a shopping mall car park when you witness a woman scream at her child “I hate you! You’re an evil bastard! I’m leaving! You can look after yourself! I’m done looking after you! Good riddance. You don’t deserve a mother! I’ll...
- Does Darth Vader Meet The Diagnostic Criteria For Borderline Personality Disorder?
In a brazen act of arm-chair diagnosis, Eric Bui and colleagues at Toulouse University Hospital in France have written a short academic article arguing that the Star Wars character Darth Vader probably meets the diagnostic criteria for borderline personality...
- The Special Issue Spotter
We trawl the world's journals so you don't have to: The Psychology of Health Disparities Among African Americans (Journal of Black Psychology). Music and Intergroup Relations Research (Group Processes & Intergroup Relations). Are high self-control...
- What Do Your Thoughts Reveal About You?
Psychologists have spent a great deal of time investigating how much of our personalities we reveal publicly: in the clothes we wear, the arrangement of our offices, the design of our websites. But what if it were possible to tap into someone's thoughts?...
- Simon Baron-cohen, Empathy, And The Atrocities In Afghanistan
From Rolling Stone Magazine An excerpt from Simon-Baron Cohen's new book, Zero Degrees of Empathy: a New Theory of Human Cruelty, appeared as The science of empathy in the Guardian. Overall, the writing revealed him to be unempathetic in some respects,...