Suboptimal decision making in borderline personality disorder: effect of potential losses

• Juan Pedro Sánchez Navarro ^[1] ; Joshua A. Weller ^[2] ; José Manuel López Navarro ^[3] ; José María Martínez Selva ^[1] ; Antoine Bechara ^[4]
  1. [1] Universidad de Murcia

     Universidad de Murcia

     Murcia, España

     
  2. [2] Idaho State University

     Idaho State University

     Estados Unidos

     
  3. [3] Hospital General Universitario Reina Sofía

     Hospital General Universitario Reina Sofía

     Murcia, España

     
  4. [4] University of Southern California

     University of Southern California

     Estados Unidos

     

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• Localización: The Spanish Journal of Psychology, ISSN 1138-7416, Vol. 17, 2014, págs. 1-9
• Idioma: inglés
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  • This research explored the underlying processes mediating risky decisions for individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). We tested whether BPD patients were more apt to take risks compared to a matched comparison group. We used two controlled tasks designed to assess risky decision-making, both to achieve gains and to avoid losses. Overall, BPD patients showed increased risk-taking compared to the comparison group (p = .011, ?2 = .224), and were especially likely to be risk-seeking when the decision was framed as a potential loss (p < .0001, d = 1.77). When the outcome involved pure losses, BPD patients were insensitive to the relative expected value between choice options resulting in suboptimal decision making (p = .004, d = 1.24), but did not differ from the comparison group when taking risks to achieve gains (p = .603, d = 0.21). We discuss these results in the context of behavioral and neuropsychiatric research suggesting abnormalities BPD patients� ability to effectively regulate affect.