Interpersonal emotion regulation, borderline personality disorder symptoms, and working memory during social-affective distraction

Difficulties in emotion regulation (ER) are a core feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD). To date, studies in BPD have mainly focused on intrapersonal rather than interpersonal emotion regulation (ipER) strategies. Attention to social-affective distractors was found to interfere with working memory (WM) in BPD, which may contribute to impairments in ER. However, whether these difficulties might affect the use of ipER is an open question. This study aimed to investigate the associations between BPD symptoms, ipER strategies, basic WM, and social-affective interference on WM. One hundred twenty-four women with a wide range of BPD symptoms rated the frequency of using the ipER strategies, including enhancing positive affect, perspective-taking, soothing, and social modeling (Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Questionnaire). In a subsample of N = 70 women, we measured attentional impairments (omission errors) induced by social-affective distractors (neutral, happy, fearful, and angry faces) and performance during distractor-free trials within a modified Sternberg WM task. Women with more severe BPD symptoms reported less frequent use of enhancing positive affect and showed more omission errors, especially for distracting happy faces. Better performance during distractor-free trials was related to more frequent use of enhancing positive affect. Task performance largely accounted for the association between BPD symptoms and the use of enhancing positive affect. Findings suggest that BPD symptoms are associated with changes in specific domains of ipER, especially a reduced tendency to increase feelings of happiness and joy through others. Attentional deficits may be an important mechanism here. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).