Associations between Perceptions of Relationship Closeness and Borderline Personality Disorder Features
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Date
2018-05
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a severe, debilitating mental disorder characterized by relationship instability, fear of abandonment, impulsivity, and emotion dysregulation (APA, 2013). Individuals with BPD often struggle to maintain long-lasting bonds such as friendships or marriages and report greater conflict and criticism in their relationships compared to healthy controls (Stepp, Pilkonis, Yaggi, Morse, & Feske, 2009). Despite relationship conflict and instability, Lazarus and Cheavens (2017) found that individuals with BPD did not differ from healthy controls in their ratings of relationship closeness. One possible explanation for these findings is that individuals with more features of BPD may use indicators of closeness (e.g., proximity, conflict, social support) differently to judge the closeness of their relationships compared to those with lower BPD features. To that end, with the present research, we examined the associations between three dimensions of relationship closeness (i.e., proximity, social support, and conflict) and BPD feature severity. We recruited 199 participants through the Research Experience Program (REP) and asked them to complete a survey that included the Inclusion of Other in the Self scale (IOS; Aron, Aron, & Smollan, 1992), the Unidimensional Relationship Closeness Scale (URCS; Dibble, Park, & Levine, 2011), and the Personality Assessment Inventory-Borderline subscale (PAI-BOR; Morey, 1991). Participants' scores on the PAI-BOR ranged from 5 to 66, meaning participants exhibit a great deal of variation in borderline feature severity. BPD feature severity was not significantly correlated with measures of relationship closeness (ps > .05). Additionally, there was no significant interaction between BPD feature severity and any dimension of closeness (ps > .05).
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Keywords
psychology, clinical psychology, borderline personality disorder, relationship closeness, relationships