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Background Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is associated with emotional dysfunction and interpersonal sensitivity. Yet, little work has characterized how BPD features predicts emotional reactivity and emotion regulation behaviors in response to interpersonal stress relative to other forms of stress. Methods Participants were 152 university students who completed baseline measures of BPD features and complied with two-week daily diary procedures assessing daily emotion regulation strategy use in response to social and non-social stressors. Results Generalized estimating equations revealed that BPD features predicted greater negative and positive emotions in response to daily stressors, and interacted with type of stressor in predicting urges and behaviors. Elevated BPD features was associated with greater urges for dysfunctional emotion regulatory behaviors and fewer functional emotion regulatory behaviors to a greater extent in response to social (versus non-social) stressors. Limitations This study was limited by its focus on past-day retrospective recall. Further, the student sample limits the generalizability of these findings. Conclusions These findings suggest that individuals with elevated BPD features may have less functional emotion regulation in social contexts.

Background Research over the past two decades supports emotion regulation as a transdiagnostic factor related to the etiology, maintenance, and treatment of a wide range of psychiatric difficulties and risky behaviors. However, prior investigations are limited by their focus on difficulties regulating negative (but not positive) emotions. Further, research has not accounted for the heterogeneity in difficulties regulating emotions. Methods Participants were 210 female victims of domestic violence (DV; M age = 36.14, 48.6% African American) who completed measures assessing emotion regulation (Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale; Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale – Positive), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD; Posttraumatic Stress Diagnostic Scale), depression (Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression Scale), alcohol misuse (Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test) and drug misuse (Drug Abuse Screening Test). Latent profile analysis was utilized to identify subgroups of DV-victimized women who were similar in endorsed difficulties in regulating negative and positive emotions. Differences in psychiatric difficulties (i.e., PTSD and depressive symptom severity) and risky behaviors (i.e., alcohol and drug misuse) were examined across these classes. Results Three classes of DV-victimized women differentiated by levels of difficulties regulating negative and positive emotions were identified. Greater psychiatric difficulties were found among classes defined by higher levels of difficulties regulating emotions, regardless of emotion valence. Risky behaviors were more prevalent among the class defined by higher levels of difficulties regulating both negative and positive emotions. Limitations Although results add to the literature on difficulties regulating emotions and their correlates, findings must be interpreted in light of limitations present including use of a cross-sectional and correlation design, reliance on self-report measures, and assessment of a select sample of women victims of DV. Conclusions Results highlight the potential importance of tailoring interventions accounting for the heterogeneity in negative and positive emotion regulation dimensions among DV-victimized women.

Emerging research suggests that two features of emotional contexts (emotion intensity, emotion type) predict spontaneous use of emotion regulation (ER) strategies. However, prior work has not examined the interactive effects of emotion intensity and emotion type on the selection of specific ER strategies. This is a noteworthy omission because in real life, emotional situations are characterized by a combination of emotion intensity and type. We recruited 562 participants and asked them to report their use of 7 ER strategies across self-identified stressful contexts that varied in emotion intensity (moderate, high) and primary emotion elicited (anger, anxiety, sadness). Participants reported using ER strategies to a greater extent in high versus moderate emotionally intense contexts, and in response to sadness (versus anger). Further, high intensity sadness prompted greater use of expressive suppression than other contexts. Our findings underscore the importance of taking into account emotional contextual features as predictors of spontaneous ER.

Emerging research and theory point to the importance of interpersonal emotion regulation processes in intrapersonal and social functioning. The aim of the present review is to present a definitional framework of interpersonal emotion regulation and highlight recent empirical research and novel paradigms in this area. We suggest that future work in this field would benefit from firstly, converging upon a common terminology; secondly, using innovative paradigms to adequately capture the dyadic nature of these processes; and finally, employing context-sensitive views of the adaptive and maladaptive influences of interpersonal emotion regulation across domains. In particular, further research is needed to identify patterns of interpersonal emotion regulation associated with psychopathology that could serve as targets for intervention.

Despite growing evidence for the efficacy of Gratz and colleagues' emotion regulation group therapy (ERGT) for deliberate self-harm (DSH) among women with borderline personality disorder (BPD), the proposed mechanism of change in this treatment (i.e., emotion regulation) remains largely unexamined. This study examined change in emotion dysregulation as a mediator of the effects of this ERGT on DSH and BPD symptoms, as well as the extent to which change in emotion dysregulation during treatment predicts further improvements in DSH during a 9-month follow-up. Participants included 61 female outpatients with BPD and recent DSH who were randomly assigned to receive this ERGT in addition to their ongoing outpatient therapy immediately (n = 31) or after 14 weeks (n = 30). Measures of emotion dysregulation, DSH, and BPD symptoms were administered pre- and post-treatment or -waitlist, and at 9-months post-treatment (for participants in both conditions who received ERGT). Results from a series of mediation analyses provide further support for emotion regulation as a mechanism of change in this treatment. Specifically, results revealed that improvements in emotion dysregulation over the course of treatment mediated the observed reductions in BPD cognitive and affective symptoms during treatment and predicted further improvements in DSH during follow-up.

Although a wealth of literature has examined the role of emotion-related factors in deliberate self-harm (DSH), less is known about neurocognitive factors and DSH. In particular, despite theoretical literature suggesting that deficits in executive attention may contribute to engagement in DSH, studies have not yet examined the functioning of this attentional network among individuals with DSH. The present study sought to address this gap in the literature by examining the functioning of the alerting, orienting, and executive attentional networks among participants with a recent history of DSH (n=15), a past history of DSH (n=18), and no history of DSH (n=21). Controlling for borderline personality pathology and depression symptoms, participants with a recent history of DSH exhibited deficits in executive attention functioning relative to participants without any history of DSH. No differences were found in terms of performance on the alerting or orienting attentional networks. These results provide preliminary support for the association between executive attention deficits and DSH.

Introduction The co-occurrence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and alcohol misuse is highly prevalent and clinically significant. Delineating mediators (i.e., emotion regulation) and moderators (i.e., gender) of this co-occurrence is critical to understanding underlying mechanisms of such comorbidity and intervention development/refinement. Method The present study examined the potential mediating role of difficulties regulating negative and positive emotions in this association as well as the moderating role of gender using a moderated mediation analysis. Participants were 475 trauma-exposed community adults recruited from Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) platform (Mage = 35.62, 55.4% women, 77.0% White). Results Difficulties regulating positive (but not negative) emotions significantly mediated the relation between PTSD symptom severity and alcohol misuse. Further, gender was found to significantly moderate each of the paths in this mediation model. Conclusions Results highlight gender-specific intervention targets for reducing alcohol misuse among trauma-exposed individuals who experience PTSD symptoms.

Emotional reactivity has been theorized to play a central role in borderline personality (BP) pathology. Although growing research provides evidence for subjective emotional reactivity in BP pathology, research on physiological or biological reactivity among people with BP pathology is less conclusive. With regard to biological reactivity in particular, research on cortisol reactivity (a neurobiological marker of emotional reactivity) in response to stressors among individuals with BP pathology has produced contradictory results and highlighted the potential moderating role of PTSD-related pathology. Thus, this study sought to examine the moderating role of PTSD symptoms in the relation between BP pathology and both subjective (self-report) and biological (cortisol) emotional reactivity to a laboratory stressor. Participants were 171 patients in a residential substance use disorder treatment center. Consistent with hypotheses, results revealed a significant main effect of BP pathology on subjective emotional reactivity to the laboratory stressor. Furthermore, results revealed a significant interaction between BP pathology and PTSD symptoms in the prediction of cortisol reactivity, such that BP pathology was associated with heightened cortisol reactivity only among participants with low levels of PTSD symptoms. Similar findings were obtained when examining the interaction between BP pathology and the reexperiencing and avoidance/numbing symptoms of PTSD specifically. Results highlight the moderating role of PTSD symptoms in the BP–reactivity relation.