A computational phenotype of disrupted moral inference in Borderline Personality Disorder

Siegel, JZ; Curwell-Parry, O; Pearce, S; Saunders, KEA; Crockett, MJ

Journal article

A computational phenotype of disrupted moral inference in Borderline Personality Disorder

Abstract:: Background

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a serious mental disorder characterized by marked interpersonal disturbances, including difficulties trusting others and volatile impressions of others’ moral character, often resulting in premature relationship termination. We tested a hypothesis that moral character inference is disrupted in BPD and sensitive to Democratic Therapeutic Community (DTC) treatment.

Methods

BPD participants (20 treated and 23 DTC-treated) and non-BPD control participants (N=106) completed a moral inference task where they predicted the decisions of two agents with distinct moral preferences: the “bad” agent was more willing to harm others for money than the “good” agent. Periodically, participants rated their subjective impressions of the agent’s moral character, and the certainty of those impressions. We fit a hierarchical Bayesian learning model to participants’ trial-wise predictions to describe how beliefs about the morality of the agents were updated by new information.

Results

The computational mechanisms of moral inference differed for untreated BPD patients relative to matched non-BPD control participants and DTC-treated BPD patients. In BPD patients, beliefs about harmful agents were more certain and less amenable to updating relative to both non-BPD control participants and DTC-treated participants.

Conclusions

The findings suggest that DTC may help the maintenance of social relationships in BPD by increasing patients’ openness to learning about adverse interaction partners. The results provide mechanistic insights into social deficits in BPD and demonstrate the potential for combining objective behavioral paradigms with computational modelling as a tool for assessing BPD pathology and treatment outcomes.

Publication status:: Published

Peer review status:: Peer reviewed

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APA Style

Siegel, J. Z., Curwell-Parry, O., Pearce, S., Saunders, K. E. A., & Crockett, M. J. (2020). A computational phenotype of disrupted moral inference in Borderline Personality Disorder. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging.

MLA Style

Siegel, J. Z., et al. “A Computational Phenotype of Disrupted Moral Inference in Borderline Personality Disorder.” Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, Elsevier, 2020.

Chicago Style

Siegel, JZ, O Curwell-Parry, S Pearce, KEA Saunders, and MJ Crockett. 2020. “A Computational Phenotype of Disrupted Moral Inference in Borderline Personality Disorder.” Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging.
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