Negativity bias and instability in spontaneous and deliberate evaluations of others: The role of borderline personality features

- This is the first study to examine spontaneous evaluations of other people in borderline personality.
- Results revealed preliminary evidence of negativity and instability in spontaneous and deliberate evaluations of others in people with BP features.
- This suggests that negativity biases and instability in borderline personality may be shaped through the combination of early and late processing stages.
- The conclusions pertaining to spontaneous evaluations rely on a non-significant trend and therefore remain tentative until replicated.
- The findings regarding instability should also be interpreted as tentative given that they did not replicate across analyses.

This study tested the hypotheses that borderline personality (BP) features are characterized by a negativity bias and instability in spontaneous and deliberate evaluations of others. Undergraduate women (N = 204) watched two movie clips depicting either positive or negative conjugal interactions. Spontaneous and deliberate evaluations of the male character were assessed after each clip with an Evaluative Priming Task and a self-report measure, respectively. Participants with high BP features showed unstable spontaneous evaluations. Results revealed a non-significant trend toward more negative spontaneous evaluations after the negative clip and less positive and more negative deliberate evaluations after watching the positive clip first relative to participants with low BP features. These results provide preliminary evidence that impression formation in borderline personality may be characterized by negative and unstable evaluations that are shaped at least in part at earlier processing stages.