The current study examined the relationships among biological predisposition, social environment, emotion regulation, and features characteristic of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Using an analogue sample, we examined whether thought suppression mediated the relationship of negative affective intensity/reactivity and perceived parental criticism with a composite of BPD features including impulsivity, interpersonal sensitivity, and aggression. Results indicated that thought suppression fully mediated the relationship between negative affect intensity/reactivity and BPD features and partially mediated the relationship between BPD features and perceived parental criticism. Clinical implications, directions for further research, and limitations of the present study are discussed.
The first step in the data analysis strategy was to examine the distribution of the data to evaluate the influence of potential outliers, skewness, and kurtosis. Because IIP-Ag scores were positively skewed, these scores were square root transformed, and the transformed scores were used in subsequent analyses (including composite analyses). The means and standard deviations for this variable, however, are presented without transformation to facilitate interpretation. To correct for family wise error rates, a Bonferroni correction procedure was used to determine significance in the correlation and regression analyses. Consequently, the alpha necessary to reach statistical significance was 0.002.
Table 1 summarizes the mean scores, standard deviations, and αα estimates for the primary measures of interest (AIM-NI, AIM-NR, AIM-N, PC, WBSI, I-7, IIP-IS, IIP-Ag). The correlations among the variables are presented in Table 2. Of the 21 correlations, 16 were significant at the p<0.002p<0.002 level. As expected, thought suppression was significantly correlated with both historical/temperamental constructs (i.e., perceived parental criticism, negative affect intensity, and negative affect reactivity) as well as BPD features (i.e., impulsivity, interpersonal sensitivity, and aggression). Additionally, perceived parental criticism, negative affect intensity, and negative affect reactivity were each associated with one or more features of BPD. Finally, perceived parental criticism was not significantly related to either AIM-NI or AIM-NR. This lack of association suggests that perceived parental criticism and negative affect intensity/reactivity may be considered independent, predictive constructs in testing the biosocial theory; thus, the subsequent regression analyses include each as predictor variables.
