Examining the relation between borderline personality features and social support: The mediating role of rejection sensitivity

• Borderline features predicted lower social support number and satisfaction.
• Rejection sensitivity fully mediated borderline features and social support number.
• Rejection sensitivity did not mediate borderline features and support satisfaction.

Potential mechanisms underlying the pathway between borderline personality features and indices of social support have yet to be elaborated, despite that social difficulties are a hallmark feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD). We hypothesized that rejection sensitivity, or the tendency to anxiously anticipate and readily perceive social rejection, might be one mechanism leading to the negative social impact associated with BPD symptoms. To test this hypothesis, a sample of college students (N = 165) completed self-report measures in the laboratory. With rejection sensitivity in the model, borderline features did not directly predict number of social supports. However, borderline features indirectly predicted decreased number of social supports via increased rejection sensitivity. Conversely, borderline features directly predicted social support satisfaction but did not evidence an indirect effect through rejection sensitivity. The results of this research suggest that rejection sensitivity is an important individual difference by which borderline features leads to the lower levels of social support demonstrated in past research. Future directions, such as examining potential mediators of social support perception, are discussed.