Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a serious mental illness characterized by emotion dysregulation. Symptoms related to emotion are thought to contribute to difficulties in perceiving emotional expressions. Individuals with BPD and demographically matched healthy controls completed a task assessing the recognition of happy, sad, and neutral facial expressions at two intensities. Patients with BPD demonstrated comparable performance on the recognition of very happy and very sad facial expression but were significantly less accurate on neutral expressions. Patients with BPD were also significantly worse in recognizing mildly happy facial expressions, however the severity of current depressive symptoms intervened this relationship. There was evidence that perceptual biases within BPD are unique from mood-congruent biases typically found in major depressive disorder. The findings advance research on the topic of emotion perception in BPD and suggest important new lines of investigation that may be useful for delineating the nature of emotion dysregulation in BPD.

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a serious mental illness characterized by emotion dysregulation. Symptoms related to emotion are thought to contribute to difficulties in perceiving emotional expressions. Individuals with BPD and demographically matched healthy controls completed a task assessing the recognition of happy, sad, and neutral facial expressions at two intensities. Patients with BPD demonstrated comparable performance on the recognition of very happy and very sad facial expression but were significantly less accurate on neutral expressions. Patients with BPD were also significantly worse in recognizing mildly happy facial expressions, however the severity of current depressive symptoms intervened this relationship. There was evidence that perceptual biases within BPD are unique from mood-congruent biases typically found in major depressive disorder. The findings advance research on the topic of emotion perception in BPD and suggest important new lines of investigation that may be useful for delineating the nature of emotion dysregulation in BPD.

The present research examined cultural differences between Euro-Canadians and Chinese in threat perception in competitive settings. Based on past cultural psychological research on self and thinking, we predicted that, compared to Chinese, Euro-Canadians would perceive greater correspondence between public appearances and reality – inferring an opponent as competent and threatening if he or she appears competent. As predicted, Euro Canadians perceived greater threat than did Chinese in an opponent who appeared competent or domineering, whereas Chinese perceived greater threat than Euro Canadians in an opponent who appeared non-distinct or ordinary (Studies 1 to 4). Consistent with my predictions, these cultural differences were partially mediated by perceived unpredictability associated with different appearances (Study 3) and fully mediated by the more general beliefs that appearances can be unreliable reflections of reality (Study 4). The results have important implications for judgment and decision making in competitions. / Thesis (Ph.D, Psychology) -- Queen's University, 2013-08-23 12:21:29.71

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Access to abstract restricted until 05/2016. / Access to thesis restricted until 05/2016. / Department of Psychological Science

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