Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences - Theses
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ItemInterpersonal functioning and empathy in females with Borderline Personality Disorder: the role of social perspective coordination( 2014)Empathy is a construct that might play a key role in understanding the interpersonal dysfunction found in Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). However, empathy in BPD has been relatively under-explored and research has produced inconsistent findings, with results regarding its contribution to interpersonal dysfunction being inconclusive. These inconsistent findings might partly be due to a lack of consensus in the definitions of empathy, perspective taking, mentalisation and Theory of Mind (ToM). They might also be due to the broad range of instruments used to measure these concepts. The present study aimed to further investigate the role of empathy in BPD, including any impairments in the development of mature empathy (which is essentially both cognitive and affective empathy) that are unique to BPD, through incorporating the developmentally-based and ecologically-valid Interpersonal Negotiation Strategies (INS) interview. Additionally, the present study aimed to provide phenomenological data regarding the development of empathy in BPD by comparing 41 females (aged 15-24 years) with BPD to 31 females (aged 15-24 years) with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). More specifically, the present study used the INS to measure Social Perspective Coordination (SPC) skills following the presentation of four video clips that were designed to either induce affective arousal in the BPD group (BPD-specific clips) or to induce no or limited affective arousal in both groups (neutral clips). The INS was used alongside self-report measures to investigate potential developmental deficiences in empathy in BPD and the relationship between empathy, interpersonal functioning and negative arousal in the disorder. The results indicated that the BPD participants responded to all film clips at a lower developmental level of SPC than did the MDD participants and, based on self-reports, they were also found to have lower levels of cognitive empathy, in particular, perspective taking, and the same levels of affective empathy as the MDD group. Finally, interpersonal functioning was found to be more impaired in the BPD group than the MDD group. However, higher levels of BPD criteria were only weakly associated with poorer social functioning and lower SPC scores were not found to be predictive of less adaptive interpersonal functioning. The present study has confirmed some key research findings that have suggested a deficit in mature empathy, high levels of interpersonal dysfunction and high levels of negative arousal in BPD. It has also extended this literature by assessing developmental levels of mature empathy. It is hoped that the results of this study will help with early identification of the significant problems associated with social interactions in BPD and enhance treatment programs.