The moderating role of rejection sensitivity in the relationship between emotional maltreatment and borderline symptoms

•Rejection sensitivity (RS) is associated with BPD symptoms in a community sample.•Emotional maltreatment (ENA) is also linked to BPD symptoms.•ENA moderates the relationship between RS and BPD symptoms.

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is theorized to develop from a combination of dispositional and environmental risk factors. Among these risk factors, both childhood emotional neglect and abuse (ENA) and rejection sensitivity (RS) have been independently associated with BPD symptomatology. However, to our knowledge, no studies have examined the interaction between these variables as they relate to BPD symptoms. In the current study, greater ENA and RS were independently associated with more BPD symptoms in a sample of undergraduate students (n = 133). In addition, there was an interaction such that RS was more strongly correlated with BPD symptoms at moderate and low levels of ENA. Our findings suggest dispositional and environmental factors combine to instantiate BPD symptoms and thus suggest RS and ENA merit investigation in clinical samples.