Category: Personality Disorders
Fitzpatrick, S., Varma, S., & Kuo, J. R. (2021). Is borderline personality disorder really an emotion dysregulation disorder and, if so, how? A comprehensive experimental paradigm. Psychological Medicine, Psychologi, in press.
,Howard, K. P., & Cheavens, J. S. (2022). Interpersonal emotion regulation in the context of social networks: A focus on borderline personality disorder. Personality Disorders Theory, Research, and Treatment. https://doi.org/10.1037/per0000566
,Dixon-Gordon, K. L., Haliczer, L. A., Conkey, L. C., & Whalen, D. J. (2018). Difficulties in Interpersonal Emotion Regulation: Initial Development and Validation of a Self-Report Measure. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10862-018-9647-9
,Miano, A., Barnow, S., Wagner, S., Roepke, S., & Dziobek, I. (2021). Dyadic Emotion Regulation in Women with Borderline Personality Disorder. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 45(6), 1077–1092. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-021-10206-8
Katherine Dixon-Gordon, PhD (she/her/hers)
Associate Professor
UMass Amherst
Amherst, Massachusetts
Skye Fitzpatrick, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
York University
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Stefan Hofmann, Ph.D.
Professor
University of Marburg, Germany
Marburg, Hessen, Germany
Kim Gratz, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)
Affiliated Faculty
University of Toledo
Toledo, Ohio
Kristen Howard, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)
Post-Doctoral Fellow
Milwaukee VA Medical Center/Medical College of Wisconsin
Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
Jennifer Cheavens, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)
Professor
The Ohio State University
Columbus, Ohio
Aidan Wright, Ph.D.
University of Michigan
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Both interpersonal and affective impairments have been identified as central components of personality disorders (PDs; Sellbom et al., 2020; Wilson et al., 2017; Wright et al., 2012). Yet emotion processes do not exist in a vacuum but rather operate within interpersonal contexts, and interpersonal processes are undoubtedly influenced by emotion. Increasingly, researchers have focused on the intersection of interpersonal and emotional processes in PDs, particularly via work on interpersonal emotion regulation (IER), referring to interpersonal interactions that modulate emotion (Zaki & Williams, 2013), across efforts to regulate one’s own emotions (intrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation) or another person’s emotions (extrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation). In response to calls for delineating interpersonal vs. intrapersonal emotion regulation deficits in personality disorders (especially borderline personality disorder, BPD), early work (Fitzpatrick, Liebman, et al., 2021; Gratz et al., 2016) (Howard & Cheavens, 2022) (López-Pérez et al., 2017) (Miano et al., 2021; Richmond et al., 2022) (Dixon-Gordon et al., 2018) has documented modest evidence that BPD is associated with less adaptive extrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation and more maladaptive intrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation than their healthy counterparts. The extent to which this pattern of results reflects alterations in emotional functioning, available social supports, or social cognition remains unclear, and additional investigation into extrinsic emotion regulation in particular is needed.
This relatively nascent research area has recently gained international traction (Howard & Cheavens, 2022; Miano et al., 2021), with investigations that harness a diverse range of methods, including experimental paradigms (Miano et al., 2021; Richmond et al., 2022), ecological momentary assessment (Dixon-Gordon et al., 2018), and novel measures (Dixon-Gordon et al., 2018; Howard & Cheavens, 2022). This symposium introduces some of the groundbreaking research galvanizing this line of work. In particular, Dr. Cheavens will present data on the association of IER and PD symptoms, as well as dyadic data on agreement across relationship partners on IER processes. Dr. Gratz will present data on links between intrapersonal emotion regulation and IER and constellations of their associations with psychopathology, including PD. Dr. Wright will present results parsing the degree to which interpersonal behaviors serve an emotion regulatory function in the context of PD (especially Narcissistic PD) across multiple samples. Dr. Howard will present dyadic data that highlight the relation of relationship characteristics to IER, and explores the potential moderating role of PD features. With joint expertise in IER and behavior therapy, Dr. Hofmann will discuss how these findings can propel future clinically-relevant research. This symposium is a timely summary of recent advancements in this field with profound clinical relevance.