Exploration of Theory of Mind in a Situation of Social Rejection in Borderline Personality Disorder

Plain-language summary

Theory of mind is one of the features of mentalization. It can be defined as the ability to predict or explain other's behavior with the assignment of beliefs, wishes, and intentions and knowing how to discriminate them with our own, or in other words to know how other people think. Although this ability is crucial to behave adequately in a complex environment, theory of mind judgments are not always optimal. Notably, individuals with borderline personality disorder are may have difficulties to infer other people's thought and state of mind as well as their own mental states. These aspects could be at the origin of symptoms like impaired and unstable relationships, identity disruption and excessive fear of abandonment. Clinical and scientific point suggest that this struggle can be reinforced by social exclusion. Our study aims at identifying if a situation of social exclusion (compared with social inclusion) may decrease theory of mind performance in borderline personality disorder. Participants will play a virtual ball-tossing game on a computer, which can lead to a situation of social inclusion or exclusion. Before and after that, they will perform theory of mind tests with visual material. The study will address three research questions: Q1: Is theory of mind performance lowered after social exclusion, compared with social inclusion? Q2: is the self-reported mentalization skills correlated with theory of mind performances? Q3: Is the social rejection sensitivity correlated with the the theory of mind performances ? The investigators make several hypotheses related to the previous research questions: Q1: the investigators expect social exclusion will decrease the subject's theory of mind performances. Q2: the investigators expect low mentalization skills are correlated to low theory of mind performances. Q3: the investigators expect that a high social rejection sensitivity will be correlated with low theory of mind performances.

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