Borderline personality features, interpersonal correlates, and blood pressure response to social stressors: Implications for cardiovascular risk

- BPD associated with social factors linked with CVD (e.g., social support).
- Hostile-submissive behavior contributed to link between BPD and social support.
- BPD predicted elevated blood pressure responses to lab stressor involving conflict.
- BPD did not predict blood pressure response to stressor involving evaluative threat.
- BPD predicted shame during recovery from laboratory stress task.

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) confers risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD). The present study used the interpersonal perspective to investigate potential mechanisms underlying this association. In two undergraduate samples (N = 293; N = 188) in Study 1, we replicated and extended research by demonstrating that BPD features were associated with hostile and somewhat submissive interpersonal behavior. Further, BPD features were associated with low social support and high levels of interpersonal conflict, two well-established risk factors for CVD. Also, hostile-submissive behavior contributed to the association of BPD features with low social support. In Study 2, we examined associations of BPD features with blood pressure (BP) responses to two interpersonal stressors implicated in models of the effects of stress on CVD, specifically by using laboratory tasks involving interpersonal conflict and evaluative threat in a third undergraduate sample (N = 143). BPD features predicted elevated BP reactivity to conflict but not evaluative threat, and such heightened reactivity previously has been found to predict the development of CVD. The interpersonal perspective may be useful for investigating mechanisms linking BPD to CVD risk, and processes that undermine otherwise protective social support or heighten exposure and reactivity to interpersonal conflict may be relevant in this regard.