Double dissociation between cognitive and affective empathy in borderline personality disorder

We sought to characterize the cognitive and affective empathic abilities of patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD). While controls showed higher cognitive as compared with affective empathy scores, the BPD group demonstrated the opposite pattern. These results suggest that a dysfunctional pattern of empathic capacity may account for behavioral difficulties in BPD. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.