Borderline Personality Traits Are Linked To Low Empathy, Study

Anyone who suffers from "borderline personality disorder", or BPD, is undergoing a mental illness that is characterised by unstable moods, and cannot maintain interpersonal relationships. Scientists from the University of Georgia explain that it might be due to lowered brain activity in regions important for empathy in those who have borderline personality traits, according to sciencedaily.

The findings were recently published in the journal Personality Disorders: Theory, Research and Treatment.

"Our results showed that people with BPD traits had reduced activity in brain regions that support empathy," said the study's lead author Brian Haas, an assistant professor in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences psychology department. "This reduced activation may suggest that people with more BPD traits have a more difficult time understanding and/or predicting how others feel, at least compared to individuals with fewer BPD traits."

For the study, Haas examined more than 80 participants, giving them a questionnaire that was called the Five Factor Borderline Inventory. It determined the degree to which their personality traits indicated borderline personality disorder. With functional magnetic resonance imaging, they then took the measure of brain activity, asking each to undertake an empathetic processing task, going into their ability to think about other people's emotional states, even as the fMRI measured their brain activity.

"We found that for those with more BPD traits, these empathetic processes aren't as easily activated," said Miller, a psychology professor and director of the Clinical Training Program.

Haas could thus get an understanding of the relationship between "empathic processing, BPD traits and high levels of neuroticism and openness, as well as lower levels of agreeableness and conscientiousness."

"Oftentimes, borderline personality disorder is considered a binary phenomenon. Either you have it or you don't," said Haas, who runs the Gene-Brain-Social Behavioral Lab. "But for our study, we conceptualized and measured it in a more continuous way such that individuals can vary along a continuum of no traits to very many BPD traits."

Haas thus found a link between persons who had high BPT along with reduced use of neural activity in the brain's temporoparietal junction and the superior temporal sulcus, two brain regions which are thought to be valuable to empathic processing.

The research has helped researchers to understand the manner in which patients undergo the personality disorders and how they require treatment.

"Borderline personality disorder is considered one of the most severe and troubling personality disorders," Miller said. "BPD can make it difficult to have successful friendships and romantic relationships. These findings could help explain why that is."

He hopes to study the disorders in naturalistic surroundings in future.

"In this study, we looked at participants who had a relatively high amount of BPD traits. I think it'd be great to study this situation in a real life scenario, such as having people with BPD traits read the emotional states of their partners," he said.